How I Became Your Father, Pt. 3: From Beckley to Morgantown

Milan Puskar Stadium at West Virginia University

Never in a million years did it enter my mind that we would be spending four weeks of our summer in Morgantown, WV. We were supposed to be putting the finishing touches on your birth plan. We were just going to hunker down, get the apartment ready, and wait for you to get here some time around August 14th. Plans, of course, changed.

---

We arrived at your grandparent’s house on Monday, June 19th tired, but excited to see everyone. We were relieved that PawPaw B was finally home from the hospital and thankful that he was doing so well in light of having a heart attack at his age.

There was not much on our agenda for the week. Your mother was going to be working and I was going to be spending as much time as I could with the family and continue to learn to code. We were thinking we would be in for a fairly chill week.

That Monday afternoon/evening was just us sitting around my parent’s house relaxing while they worked to get my grandfather settled in.

Later that evening, mom and I went out to grab some food that nan had ordered for us to eat. I feel like any time I take your mother out back in West Virginia it is a cultural experience for her. She did not want to get out of the car at the place we were picking up food as she deemed it a bit too. She said it looked like a set from The Walking Dead. I can’t really say I blamed her. This is the type of place that if you didn’t know it was opened, you would not think it was.

Now if you ask granny what the highlight of our trip was (prior to the course of events going down that led to your birth) she would say that it was your mommy and I staying at her house. Typically we stay at nan and grandad’s house in my old room, but with PawPaw B staying with them they suggested we stay with granny. And so we did.

Tuesday was just a normal day. Not a lot happened that day. In fact, I can’t really remember any of it.

Wednesday is when things started to get crazy.

Wednesday started out like any other day. We got up and went over to nan and grandad’s house where mommy started her work day and I began working on some coding tutorials.

We were just sitting there working away when out of nowhere you mother jumps up out of her seat saying she was having a heart palpitation.

She took a few moments to take deep breaths and tried to relax a bit but to no avail. We decided to maybe get outside to get fresh air and take a walk.

The walk did not help. After the walk we went over to granny’s house. We decided that it would be best to get some food and let mommy lay down for a bit. At this time we also decided that it would probably be a good idea to check her blood pressure. It turns out her blood pressure was fairly high. To ensure this reading was accurate, we waited a few minutes and took it again. Still, it was high.

We fixed her a nice, healthy lunch and sent her to bed. I went downstairs to watch a bit of TV in hopes of clearing my mind and easing my anxiety. She took a really long nap. Like three hours long.

After waking she again took her blood pressure. Still it was quite high.

This made us even more anxious.

I went across the street to get nan. When her and I got back over to granny’s house we took mom’s blood pressure again. Still high. We even used a different blood pressure machine just to make sure.

Still high. No matter what we did, mom's blood pressure was still high.

Earlier in the day mommy had messaged her doctor to see what she should do. The doctor said that she should rest and after that if it was still high she needed to go to the hospital.

At this point we needed to decide what we were going to do.

Being far from home obviously complicates things a bit.

My mom suggested going to her primary doctor, whose office was really close by to see if she could be of any help. She could not. We drove to a near-by urgent care to see if they could see us. They were closed. So we drove to a different urgent care a bit further away.

We waited what felt like an eternity (but in actuality it probably wasn’t all that long). Waiting is hard. Waiting in a doctor’s office is nearly impossible.

The doctor finally made it into the room. The first words out of his mouth is “What are you doing here?!” He quickly and emphatically told that we needed to go to the emergency room. There was nothing they could do for us at urgent care.

We were really hoping that we could avoid going to the ER. Especially the ER that we had to go to. You see, that hospital does not have the best reputation, but we went anyways.

We left the urgent care and made our way to the hospital with a quick stop through the Chick-fil-a drive thru. I didn’t eat much as I was far to anxious to really be hungry. This would prove to be a very poor decision.

We made it to Raleigh General and proceeded to the ER. Now the good thing about going to the ER when you are pregnant is they don’t make you wait in the ER, they send you directly to the labor and delivery floor. I can’t tell you how nice it is to go directly into a room instead of having to wait around in the ER.

We got to the room and they hooked mommy up to a baby monitor and began running tests. It didn’t take long for them to diagnose her with what we had all feared — preeclampsia.

With the diagnosis, we were told that they would keep us overnight to monitor things. Once we got home we would need to follow up with our regular doctor and we would probably need to have check ups a couple of times per week.

Being in the hospital was terrifying. We could tell even before being told that your heart rate was too low. It never really got out of the 120s-130s beats per minute and would keep dropping.

After a while they moved us to a different room that had an extra bed where I could try to get some rest. They were going to keep mom hooked up to the monitors overnight.

At this point nan and grandad left us to go back home to rest as well.

Once we were settled into the room we turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep. Sleep would never come. After only about 30–45 minutes the nurse came back in.

She told us that she was not seeing enough spikes in the heart rate. She told there was a chance we would have to deliver.

However, they were going to have to transfer us because they did not deliver babies less than 34 weeks. She then left us alone to get the doctor.

I will never forget the feeling that rushed over me when she gave us that news. My heart rate spiked, I became extremely hot, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I fought off vomiting. I was on the verge of a panic attack. The only thing that grounded and brought me back was knowing I needed to be present in order to support your mother.

The doctor came in and began talking to us about our situation. That conversation will never leave me. He told us that he didn’t see us leaving the hospital without a baby.

Internally I scoffed. Mom was confused. This seemed wrong. That doctor had to be crazy, right?

We would be giving birth to you imminently? Certainly not.

At this point things really started to move.

The doctor left us to work on coordinating which hospital they were going to send us to. There were two options of hospitals with NICUs to send us to — Women’s and Children’s in Charleston or WVU Children’s in Morgantown. Once they figured out which hospital we would go to, they would then have to coordinate the means of transportation — ambulance or helicopter.

At that moment it was just your mom and I in that hospital room. Shell shocked. Confused. Scared. We held each other and cried, not knowing what the next few hours would bring. We were really going to be having a baby this soon? Were you going to be okay? Was mom going to be okay?

I called my mom. Mom called gammy.

We needed to get gammy here ASAP. It is a long way from New Jersey to West Virginia.

After what seemed like an eternity, but in truth it probably wasn’t that long, the doctor came back and told us that Women’s and Children’s didn’t have a bed and they would be sending us to Morgantown. He left us again to coordinate the transportation. We were praying for an ambulance and not a helicopter. You mom was terrified of riding in a helicopter and I knew that if they took here in a helicopter I wouldn’t be able to travel with her.

After a little more of a wait, they let us know that an ambulance was on the way to drive us to Morgantown.

What a relief!

We would wait again for what felt like hours for the ambulance to arrive. Of course it wasn’t hours but in these situations time moves very differently.

Finally they arrived. Now I wish I could remember the names of the paramedics that showed up to take us to Morgantown because they were characters.

The process of getting mom from the hospital bed and into the ambulance was nothing short of taxing. It took them a lot of time to get everything straightened out. They had particular issue with the IV that took several minutes to fix. When you're already on the brink of a panic attack, every small setback seems like a giant nightmare.

Once everything was settled we said goodbye to my parents and walked out to the ambulance bay. They loaded her in the back and I got up front with the driver. We settled in for the three hour drive, through the winding West Virginia mountains, to Morgantown.