Saturday, the day the waters broke

On Saturday afternoon I summoned some will power to get out of bed and get some supplies as we both felt the birth could come at anytime, yet as we had both been bed bound with respective illness’s, we had no supplies. I did some internet transfers of money before I left home and on leaving the first thing I did was get petrol. I grabbed a paper as well. But the card declined (having worked with Schizophrenics who have such a hard time with Eftpos I am convinced they use the wrong word. It should say ‘mistake’, not ‘declined’). I checked the card at the ATM, it said the money was there but it wasn’t available. I told the bored underpaid teenager I’ld be back and I’ld leave the car there. I walked back home and checked again on the computer and it said everything was right so I walked back to the petrol station and tried again and it said “mistake”. I knew there was enough in there to cover the petrol minus the paper so I did that. Then I drove into Lower Hutt and went to the post shop (it’s a Kiwibank account - one of Jim Andertons decent ideas). I spoke to a young Indian man who got his manager, also a young Indian man - both had wedding rings I noticed - and we went into his little office and he looked up the account on his computer.
“The money’s there” He said, “But you wont be able to access it until Tuesday because of a glitch.”
“Gentlemen,’ I said, “My wife’s probably going to have a baby tonight and I need to get that money out.”
They both kinda jumped to and said, “Right.” in unison and before I knew it they had the cash in my hand.

In Woolworths I started to feel decidedly wobbly. I got the supplies we needed and went through the check out. As I went to pay I realised I didn’t have my wallet. Another underpaid teenager looked blankly at me over my food. I walked back to the car hoping and sure enough it was there. I walked back to the check out and the girl pointed vaguely to another check out where my stuff was. I got it, got in the car and drove home.

Later that night I couldn’t sleep and found myself trying to recall everything I knew about the birthing process. To my horror I found I couldn’t remember anything. Indeed I couldn’t even recall if meconium was a pregnancy term or whether it was a nut flavoured ice cream (it seemed perfectly logical that if it were a nut, meconium would come from South America). Eventually I got up, checked the meconium thing and went off course it’s the first poo, he black one, and then watched another DVD. After I had watched Hotel Rwanda, I went to bed and fell asleep. Sicily got up and couldn’t sleep, her waters broke at 7 am on the 2nd. I woke up at about 8 and sicily was lying on the couch awake with a towel wrapped around.

I knew what this meant and felt terrible for sleeping through it. I was suddenly reminded of the gospel story where the three disciples slept when Christ asked them to watch while He prayed.

We rang the pager and left a message for Bridget. I rang Sunita who said she would drive down from Hawkes Bay. She also reminded us that once the waters were broken there was no protection for the baby. Which means none of the normal procedures for bringing on active labour.

There wasn’t much else to do. Sicily wasn’t in labour.