Original thread from my old forums
or… The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful.
I headed up to Indiana this weekend to work on a Linux server for www.walther.org. Mom and Stacey decided that they wanted to come up with me so that they could see some people while I was up there. We headed out Friday morning and it took all day to get there it seemed like. We made terrible time due to traffic and having to stop for different things.
Once we finally got there we spent some time with Imon, Anita, Shelly, Jessica, Trevon, Jeff and Nana over at Uncle Imon�s place. He has found another Triumph and it rebuilding it from a real mess. It is still a pretty good ways from being done, but it has a real nice start.
We hung out there for a while and then I went home with Shelly and Jeff to crash at their house. Once we got there, she mentioned something about fixing her Linux box and I took some time to set it up for her. While I was working on it, we all talked about things, not only technical, but personal as well. We hit bed that night about 1:30.
Shelly and I got up the next morning and headed in to Walther to work on the server there. It took about four hours to do the upgrade and test every function of it once it was back up. Of course that included a tour of the whole mansion which is straight out of House on Haunted Hill. The mansion is connected directly to not only a psychiatric ward, but a closed section of the hospital and a morgue.
After the upgrade was done, Shelly and I headed out to eat and tooled around Indy for a bit. We then headed back to her house and hung out for a bit. While she was on the phone with one of her friends, Jeff and I had close to an hour long talk about all kinds of different stuff. This is an important point, because it probably effectively triples the amount of time I have spent talking to Jeff and I have known him for probably seven years.
After Shelly dropped me off at Nana�s, I headed over to Jim�s house to see him and Sabra. We really didn�t do anything spectacular, just kinda hung out and talked, checked out all the kewl gizmos that they had gotten for when the baby came and just generally relaxed. We went to sleep that night around eleven or so�
And then all hell broke loose�
At around 1:30 I got a call on my cell phone. I woke up on, apparently, the second ring. Looked at the number and not recognizing it since it was a really crazy area code (702), killed it and sent it to voicemail. I waited a couple seconds for the voicemail to hit and was amazed to hear Nana on the other end, telling me that Stacey had an epileptic seizure and mom and her were headed to the hospital. Well I went in and woke up Jim and a very pregnant Sabra (it becomes important later) and ask Jim to drive me to the hospital, since I had no idea where it was in relation to their new house.
When we got there Stacey seemed pretty good actually. She looked as well as I had ever seen her after a seizure. Imon and Anita were there as well. The doctor checked her medicine levels and said they looked good and we all sort of chocked it up to a fluke. The released her and we all headed home for the night… or so we thought.
Around 4:30 I got another call from another crazy area code (404), this time I was expecting it and answered it. It was Nana again telling me that Stacey was going back to the hospital because when she got home she had another seizure. This time though I didn�t want to wake everyone up so I figured I would finish the night out and then head up there in the morning.
So around seven Sabra got up to find me flipping through the yellow pages to get the number for St. John�s hospital. She immediately ask what was going on and I told her and ask her to give me directions to St. Johns. Before I left I mentioned that Sabra shouldn�t get upset over all this or she would probably go into labor. (This also becomes important later.)
So I headed to the hospital. Stacey had just been admitted and was pretty much just zonked out from the drugs that they had given her to stop the seizures. We waited for a bit to hear from the doctor and he said that he thought that her medicine levels were low and they wanted to watch her for 24 hours. That was supposed to give the medicine they gave her to wear off and for her regular medicine to take effect.
So we waited there for a bit and I was already starting to get twitchy thinking of a whole day sitting in the hospital, but with Stacey sick that was what I was going to do. Then I get a call from Jim saying that him and Sabra were on their way to the hospital. I thought maybe they were coming to see Stacey, so I told them her room number and was rather surprised when he said that they would be on the second floor (Stacey was on the third). They were headed in to have their baby.
So I rushed down to tell the people on the second floor to call me when they got there and let me know what room it was. So I spent the day running from the third to the second floor. Watching one person recover from a terrible event as two people sped toward a wondrous one and I do mean sped. From all accounts that I have heard the first child birth is supposed to be the longest, but by around two o�clock there was talk of getting ready to push. That is pretty quick for someone that was admitted around ten o�clock. Though, I must add at this point that my mom�s friend, Kim, has a daughter that just had her third baby the day before and was only in the hospital 37 minutes before she had him. The key word there is third though.
Around this time Stacey was starting to come out of the drug induced sleep that they had put her in and starting to eat some. Kim and Kenny had come up to see Stacey and were talking with mom. I headed back down after a bit to see how the baby was coming along. By then, they had closed the room to everyone except the chosen few and were well on the way to getting the kid out. I waited outside the room for quite a while, but headed back up to Stacey�s room to check on her at one point. When I got back down Jim�s mom was the first to tell me that Amber had been born. She weighed 7 pounds even. 4:12 I believe was the official time. I was one of the first ones, along with all the other family members (of which I am actually not one, though later I think Sabra made me an honorary. I�ll let her confirm that if she wants to.), to get to go in and see her. When more and more family started to show up I headed back up to check on Stacey since I felt a little out of place among them.
I met Zach (one of Kim�s twins) on the way up to the third floor and we headed up there to see how Stacey was doing. Once we were up there it was decided that we should take Nana�s truck (which mom drove to the emergency room) back to her at her house and pick up some stuff to eat. About then was the first time that I realized that I hadn�t had anything to eat since six the night before.
So Zach and I headed to Pendleton to take the truck back and get some food. It was a quick drive there, and all I could think about was how cool it was to see Amber and be there when it all happened. I spent a little time at Nana�s reassuring her that Stacey was ok and that they just had her zonked out right now, but that she was coming out of it pretty good. I could tell that Zach was a little uncomfortable since it wasn�t his grandma or anything so I headed out. We stopped at Hardees for some of the thick burgers and headed back to the hospital.
When we were back there Shelly and Anita were there as well to see Stacey, so she had a full house. Apparently all of them had been down there to see the baby. Shelly and I headed back down to see her again, but she was getting a bath.
This bouncing back and forth had taken a lot out of me as well as the general lack of sleep over the last few days and I ended up crashing out at about 9:30 or so.
When I woke up I thought I would head down and check out how it was going with baby Amber. I got down there to find Sabra a little upset because she couldn�t get Amber to feed and she had sent Jim home to get some sleep around two in the morning. She was by herself and was just generally upset. I think she was a little relieved to see me and I helped to watch the baby while she got some bottle formula to try her on. That all worked out for the good and Amber and Sabra both settled down a bit. I hung out for a bit until Jim�s parents showed up and I thought I would go check on how Stacey was waking up.
Stacey was still pretty much asleep so I sat watched some television. Sabra called up to our room after a bit and ask if I could try and call Jim and see if he was ok. I took that to mean that she was down there alone again and I thought see might want someone down there with her. So I let her call Jim and see what was going on. Turns out he had pretty much just collapsed after the excitement of the previous day and slept right through his alarm. I hung out there for a while until Jim made it in. Three of us all kinda hung around each taking turns messing with Amber and just generally decompressing a bit. Stacey was looking good at this point and so far everything had come back good with Amber. She was a perfect baby it seemed. Jim and Sabra were a little worried about one of her feet which was a little bent from how she was positioned in the womb. About that time Dr. David Beam (who was both me and Jim�s child doctor) said that he though it would be ok, but wanted to take some X-Rays just to make sure.
After a bit Grandma and Joe showed up to see Stacey and Joe needed to pick up his police report from were a lady had hit his car on Friday. The doctor came back in and said that everything looked good for Stacey and that we could head out as soon as she had eaten lunch. Sabra, Jim and Amber were headed for home around four or so and everything was looking good. We took Stacey down to see Amber after she was done eating and headed out to Nana�s to pick up the rest of Stacey and mom�s stuff. We spent a little time there reassuring Nana that Stacey was ok and then headed home. Before we left Pendleton though we stopped at Subway were Stacey got a six inch pizza sub. That is important because she had just ate almost all of her lunch at the hospital. Smile
So pretty much after that we headed home and got home about six or so. It was a helluva long weekend. Though I am glad that I got to see Amber born, I do wish it could have happened without Stacey being in the hospital. I really hate it that I had to come back down here so soon after Amber was born. I would like to spend a lot more time with her. Almost like I was really her uncle or something. Very Happy
And now for your viewing pleasure. Amber Lindzy