Zara's Story: Adventure at the Airport

This was the second time for me. My daughter is five years old, and when I found out that I was having another girl I could not have been happier. Hana, our first, also wanted a sister. My due date was December 7th, 2001. All was well, for during this pregnancy I had experienced no morning sickness. I felt wonderful.

On December 5th, I was expecting my cousin, who was flying in from Texas to stay with me for a week. That morning I woke up with the hope that nothing would happen that day, that would prevent me from being at the airport to pick her up, since my husband had to work.

I arrived at the airport in time to meet her 2 p.m. flight, and was told that her flight had been delayed for another half hour, and that she wouldn't come in till 2:30 p.m. At exactly 2:00 p.m., while sitting on the bench with my five-year-old, I felt this big gush of water. Fortunately I was wearing jeans and a long black coat so no one could see that my pants were wet.

With another half hour to go for my cousin's arrival, I decided to wait since I had no contractions. I knew that my husband was leaving work early that day and would already be on his way home, and we don't have cell phones so there was no way I could reach him to let him know what had happened.

My cousin finally arrived. Soon after, while driving home at 3:15 p.m., the contractions started. Since they were bearable I decided to go home, shower, change and get my hospital bag. I stopped at the store on the way because we had no milk, and there were a few other items that I knew I could not rely on my husband to remember. We got home at 4:00 p.m. Twenty minutes later my husband arrived. By this time the pain was getting pretty intense.

He rushed me to the hospital, where we arrived at 4:55 p.m. The midwife examined me ten minutes later, and said that since I was already 8 cm. dilated, they needed to rush me to another room immediately because this baby was coming right away!

There was no time to do paperwork to admit me, no time to give me anything for the pain. The nurses could not believe that I was already 8 cm. dilated because I did not look like I was in that much pain. The midwife told me that if I had waited any longer to come to the hospital I would have had this baby at home or on the way to the hospital.

My daughter was born at 5:26 p.m. It was the easiest pregnancy and easiest birth, I thank God for that blessing, and also for my little blessing Zara. She weighed six pounds eleven ounces. She is a joy to us, and I want to share her birth story since everyone I have told it to has had a good laugh.