Lift Up Your Hearts!

(photo taken shortly after birth) 

Jeremiah Patrick Daley
Born 13 February 2013, 3 a.m.
Weight: 8 pounds, 2 ounces
Length: 20.5 inches

Having given birth five times, Heather could call herself an old hand at the whole pregnancy-birth-newborn process.  It's lovely to see the calm, matter-of-fact confidence that experience brings.  Sometimes, however, we get a gentle reminder that nothing should be taken for granted when it comes to babies.

Heather "always" goes into labor late.  Isaac came two days past his due date, and he was followed by Jonathan, Noah, and Faith, every single one of whom came exactly five days late.  True, Joy was then three days early, but there was some uncertainty about her due date that led Heather to believe that she was probably late as well.

Hence the confidence with which we scheduled our flights to New Hampshire a mere six days before the due date for the next baby.  Hence Heather's comfort when plans outside of their control had Jon returning from Seattle only a week before the date.  Hence a great deal of scrambling when Heather called, a full nine days early, to announce the early signs of labor.

That was Tuesday, February 12.  Perhaps Jon's story will end up on their blog; I can only tell ours.  I do know he had work to complete and a continent to cross.

We had reservations to fly out on Friday the 15th, and by Tuesday I was feeling reasonably confident—though by no means certain—that I could accomplish most of what I needed to do before then.  It was going to be a busy week, with Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday commitments.  To leaver earlier, we would have to desert our choir, which is small enough to notice two missing voices, for the singing of Fauré's beautiful Cantique do Jean Racine.  My brother was in town, and had originally planned to stay an extra day so that we could get together for dinner Thursday.  Sadly, we were unable to make that work out, which as things turned out was a good thing.

We wrestled awhile with the possibilities:  Changing reservations would be expensive, if not impossible, and early signs of labor can come days before the baby is born.  Should we keep our Friday plans?  Could we possibly get ready in time to leave early?  Should both of us go, or just me, with Porter following on the original schedule?  The only available flight would get us in after 9:30 p.m.  Would that be too late?

I called Southwest.  There were three seats left on the flight, exactly two of which could be used with their old-style "standard awards," of which we had two.  (For various reasons we decided this was a better option than paying cash to reschedule the original flights.)  Porter made the reservations and we flew into high gear.  Fortunately, I had already begun the thinking part of packing; otherwise I doubt I could have made it.  As it was we brought more than we needed, not having time to weigh the options), and forgot a few things, but nothing critical that I know of.

Never before have I decided at 11 a.m. to fly out of town at 7 p.m.  How we managed to get three days' worth of work done in five hours I still don't know—thought part of the secret lay in deciding that some things simply were not going to get done, and that would be okay.  At least I had put the final stitch into my traditional baby quilt gift the night before!  Another part is having good neighbors who will take books back to the library for you and check on your house when you're sure you've forgotten to do something important.

The friends who had planned to drive us to the airport could not do so at the new time.  Few people can during the work day.  So Porter arranged to rent a car for the one-way trip to the airport.  (It's much less expensive than a taxi ride.)  Having had a previous bad experience with that particular Hertz office before, he made a point of asking if someone would be at the desk, for sure, at the stated time, because he didn't have time to wait around.  "Absolutely," he was reassured.

I guess he didn't hear the whispered, "not."  No one was at the desk.  When he finally found the clerk, they had no car for him.  Scrambling, they came up with something (after a long wait) ... only to discover that there was almost no gas in the tank.  "Almost no" as in "about 1/14 of a tank."  Would it get us to the airport?  We could only try.

It did, though not without some worry:  the gauge was solidly in the red zone as we pulled up the final hill at the airport.  We grabbed our suitcases (two large bags, two small bags, two computer bags, and two violins) and flew to the terminal.  Due to the lateness of our reservations, we had not been able to print our boarding passes, but instead were given documents that would get us through security and had been told we'd have to get our boarding passes at the gate.  However, when we checked our bags, the attendant said we had everything we needed.  She handed me a little folder, and I asked if the boarding pass was in there; she replied affirmatively.

On to security!  The good news is that we both have Clear, so there was no line for us.  The bad news is that when I opened my folder, there was no boarding pass, only baggage claim tickets.  At that point, Porter said, "The boarding pass prints out at the kiosk; you were supposed to pick it up there.  So I dashed back—and I can't help thinking of O. J. Simpson every time I run through the airport—and to my surprised delight, the boarding pass was still there.  The attendant said she'd have been happy to print a new one if it had not been.  She also told me to relax, as I had plenty of time before the flight.

That's easy for her to say.  Little did she know that as we started to unload onto the security belt—all four computers in separate bins, shoes off, coats in bins ... what?  coats?  what coats???  We'd left our coats in the back seat of the rental car!  It being about 87 degrees when we left Orlando, their absence hadn't even registered in our somewhat addled brains.

Now it was Porter's turn to run through the airport, while I waited at security with all the luggage.  After a while, during a lull in the proceedings, two very helpful TSA workers offered, "Let's get everything through so all he needs to worry about is the coats, and he can meet you on the other side," then whisked me (and the four computers and two violins) through.  By the time I had myself put back together, there was Porter coming through the scanner.  He'd had some trouble finding the coats, but had succeeded at last.

We made it to the gate just before boarding.  I've often wondered who the poor souls are who get "C" boarding passes on Southwest, and now I know:  I was the last of the line at C-69, and Porter wasn't much ahead of me.  So we didn't have seats together, but we had seats!  After that I began to relax.  Not enough to fall asleep, however.  I rotated among looking out the window, trying to read, praying, and wondering if we'd be greeted with the news, "It's a boy!" (That was a pure guess; no one knew the sex at that point.)

We landed a little before 10, then picked up our baggage with no trouble.  Soon thereafter Jon's plane arrived; even better, he was on it.  (There had been some question about the connection he had to make.)  This was where I made a disturbing discovery:  My coat pocket had somehow come unsnapped, and while my hat, scarf, and hood were still there, my gloves were missing.  My good gloves that I had bought when we lived in Boston.  That was disappointing, to say the least, and I couldn't fathom how the pocket had come open, as it never had before, but it didn't take me long to conclude that if losing my gloves was the worst thing to happen on this adventure, I'd be well off indeed.  What made the situation odd was that the exact same thing had happened to Porter!  Pocket unsnapped, with the only thing missing being his nice Boston gloves.  At this point we began to suspect that perhaps someone at Hertz had checked the coats for ID and been a little too tempted by the nice gloves, but we'll never know.  Even at the cost of two pairs of gloves, we couldn't be too upset:  at least we had our coats!

Jon's mom picked us up at the airport, with no more news than that the kids were in bed and Heather trying to rest, and we were soon making the hour-long drive to Hillsboro.  While we were still en route to home, Heather called to let us know that when we arrived we'd be turning right around and heading for the birth center.  After some fast luggage-and-car shuffling, we were on our way.  About half an hour later, we pulled into the birth center, the kids—somewhat stunned from having been awakened so soon after falling asleep—settled themselves in the playroom, and Heather settled herself into a large, warm, birthing tub.  She had no plans for a water birth, but found laboring in the warm water to be soothing.

For a couple of hours, the kids played, Porter read stories, and I spend most of my time holding either Faith or Joy, and going with them between with play room and the birthing room, as they wished.

I said Heather had no plans for a water birth, but the baby had other ideas.  By the time Heather was ready to move to the bed, she realized she couldn't do it:  She gave a couple of loud cries, and Jeremiah made his appearance very soon thereafter, right around 3 a.m.  (Midnight for Jon.)

It was Faith's turn to announce the sex of the baby.  In the excitement I had lost track of which girl I was holding, and kept moving Joy closer in, wondering why she wasn't saying anything.  But soon the real Faith proclaimed the baby to be a boy, and Jeremiah settled happily on Mom's chest.  At some point all the other necessary things happened (e.g. delivering the placenta), and eventually they dried off and moved to the bed, surrounded by admiring family.

I don't know whether it was the water birth or just his nature, but Jeremiah (who didn't have a name at that point) was a very calm, happy baby.  I don't believe he needed any suctioning, and if he cried I don't remember it.  He simply looked around, breathed peacefully, and soon latched onto the breast as if he had decided that the world was a very good thing indeed.

I wouldn't dream of saying that any birth was easy, but I will say that Heather's getting good at this.  She was downright perky within minutes of the birth, and didn't even flinch when one of the kids said, "And Joy will announce the sex of the next one!"

After some recovery time, we piled back into the cars, our numbers increased by one, and arrived home before the dawn.  I warmed up some chicken soup for Heather, who had been instructed to eat something before going to bed.  Soon everyone else had crashed; I stayed up another couple of hours to send some e-mails and do some things that needed to be done before Porter's workday started in a few hours.  I crashed a bit after 8 a.m. and got in a whole two hours.  At some point I calculated that I had a total of three hours of sleep out of 40, and of course Heather and Jon had less.

But Jeremiah is still a very good baby.  He doesn't have day and night figured out yet, but of his four major life assignments so far—eating, sleeping, excreting, and looking unbearably cute—he does them all superbly.

I must say I'm still a bit stunned, and you can tell by the delay in getting this post out that life around here has been busy and chaotic.  Porter and I were not the only ones to have been counting on a few more days before Jeremiah's arrival!  But all is well, mother and baby doing very well, Joy adjusting admirably from baby to big sister, everyone pitching in to make things go—well, not smoothly, but at least keeping all the balls in the air.

I know it's Lent, but this occasion deserves an exception:

Alleluia!

Thanks be to God!