WonderBoy's Adventures of Preemie Land

I promised you guys full disclosure of the events prior to Wonderboy's preemie birth. Grab some popcorn and pull up a chair, if your weird and read blogs standing.

Some may think I was a wee bit negligent in getting to the doctor for regular check ups early, after finding out I was pregnant with number 2. I admit I was a bit in denial after just given birth not 5 months before. Other factors also caused my delay-Hub's insurance. We had just moved down to Tx in July, the company at the time was rather small and the insurance they had was in my opinion a little shady. Needless to say upon signing up for coverage in Oct. they denied insurance on me since I was pregnant and claimed that it was a pre existing condition. Ahem I be thinking that is illegal but I'm no lawyer. Seeing that we were young and naive we said OK Mr. insurance guy. In all honesty this was probably a blessing in disguise.

Since they denied my claim and we just happened to still be on the po' side (which is where your poor but can't afford the or), we went through the beauracratic way of doing things and applied for Medicaid. When going through this process every form known to man must be filled out and getting to actually see the doctor takes weeks upon waiting for full approval.

At 16 weeks, I finally was able to secure an appointment with the doctor. That day happened to be Valentines day. If I remember correctly it was a fairly gloomy day. I was dreading the whole process, yet anticipating it at the same time. We were able to find someone to watch our little baby. I hated just dropping him off at this strange ladies house, but was reassured since she was a licensed sitter. I was so very tempted that morning to just take him with me, that's how much I hated leaving him. I also hated that hubs was out of town over a hundred miles away.

I didn't know anybody from adam in the small town we lived in. Population 1200 including dogs, cats and cows. If ever there were an emergency, I'd be screwed. I'd have no clue who to call. I had barely memorized hub's work number and met his boss maybe once.
I drove into medium sized city for my appointment. All was normal and since it was the first visit a pap was in order. Woot.
This was probably the only visit with a doctor I would get. He jacked me up on the table ready to go under the hood and take a look around. He barely "cracked the hood" wide enough to just see and exclaimed "I think your 3cm dilated!"

I flew up from the table about 5 feet. "What the he**!?" I've never seen such urgency from both doc and nurse. We went straight to the room with the ultrasound. He used the probe in every which a way direction a person can move and position an ultrasound. Inside, Outside, Sideways, Upside down, you name it he did it. You could see the gaping hole as big as a donut. Freaked out is the best I can explain my feelings. My mind is completely racing. What does this mean that I'm already dilated at 16 weeks? How can this be?

Doc's next question threw me for a loop. "Can you drive yourself to the hospital or should we get an ambulance and who do you need to call?" Uh first off, obviously I drove myself here, which was a 40 minute drive, and the hospital is 2 blocks away. I think I can make it.
Since this was a "emergency situation" who to call is a pretty big deal. Hubs did have his cell phone, but he was in a class teaching. I knew he wouldn't answer the phone much less have it on. Besides not a lot he could do at the moment. The only other person I had the faintest idea to call was Shorty his boss. I think I left a twenty minute message on his voice mail. I was freaking.

I drive myself to the hospital totally unsure of what the heck was going to happen next. What were they going to do? I had no idea this kind of thing was common- incompetent cervix, I think is the term. When you have no contractions yet your cervix dial ates. They get me checked in and settled. The only thing I can think about is Gameboy at the babysitter; and that I only left him a bottle or two, as this wasn't supposed to be a 5 hour visit.

Since I couldn't get hubs on the phone and my mother was at work over 300 miles away. I call my dad collect. Funny thing about my dad is he doesn't do well with automated phone calls. If your calling him collect, he's going to assume your a telemarketer and hang up on you. I would have loved to call my mother at work, but it's probably not kosher to call your mother collect at work. I tried 2-3 times calling dad to get him to listen to accept the charges for his dying daughter, maybe not dying but dang it, it was important. I finally dug around in my purse and found a calling card that I used when hubs was out of town. Sweet hallelujah, I finally get in touch with dad, an actual person and not an answering machine.

Somehow among all the franticness, hub's boss gets a hold of him and lets him know there's an obvious emergency going on. I can only imagine how I sounded on that voicemail and what the conversation was with C and his boss was like. Hub's manages to call the hospital and get in touch with me. I had never been so relieved to hear from him. All I said was you have to call the babysitter and tell her what's going on!
To be continued...