Charlotte is Born Part One

Sami woke me up early Sunday morning, before sunrise, with what I thought was bad news. She sat in the dark on the edge of her bed and explained to me that she had lost her mucous plug. Having no idea what this meant, I took her quiet confusion as a sign that something was wrong with our baby. The due date was still a month and two days away. She researched a few things online, told me everything was fine and then I went back to sleep.

We took it pretty easy that day, chatting with my parents and one of Sami's friends on Skype. The day before we took the subway deep into Seoul for Sami's acupuncture appointment and later we ate dinner at her favorite Korean restaurant to celebrate her birthday from earlier in the week. At 10 o'clock at night, I was surprised when Sami came into the room I was reading and got on the computer. She said that she couldn't sleep for whatever reason, which was completely abnormal as she is usually out without a problem by 8:30 or 9. She went back to bed, and at some point, I tried to download a movie- a documentary about Joan Rivers. Like most people, I have a difficult time falling asleep Sunday nights with the impending work week looming ahead, and I knew that the documentary was well received.

Before I could start the movie, however, Sami rushed in and exclaimed that her water broke (or, to be more PC- "her membranes released"). The shorts she had been wearing were soaked and she left a trail of amniotic fluid oh her way to the bed. She calmly but assertively explained to me that this was a sign that the baby would be born in 24 to 48 hours. I got her the phone so that she could call our doula who was on vacation in Canada, and started to back our bags for the hospital.

All along Sami had a feeling the baby would be early. We were both surprised by the original due date given after the baby's first ultrasound, thinking that it should have been earlier. Sami was also concerned about how tight her belly had become even with five weeks to go, and she experienced contractions (or "surges" to again use the PC term) every night. We both openly wished for her to come early and alleviate any possible complications in trying to get her out of the country and remain on the national insurance plan before our contracts wore out at the end of August. Of course, we still weren't prepared for this early.

Not long ago, we had made the decision to have the baby in a birthing center with a midwife we liked and trusted. However, we knew that the midwife seldom took mothers that were less than 37 weeks along, and when Sami talked to her, she said that she would like for us to go to a hospital first, and if they said it was ok, then we could go to the birthing center.

As Sami calmly talked things out alternately with our doula in Canada, the back-up doula in Korea, and the midwife, I frantically scrambled to find items listed in the "what to pack" section of the baby book. Luckily, Sami had already packed a bag for the baby (like I said, she had a feeling she was going to be early) so all I had to do was pack a bag for us. I got all of the clothes and I knew that we had to have snacks on hand. We hadn't gone grocery shopping like we had planned to that weekend, but we did make it to Costco a few days prior so all that was on hand were American comfort food stand-bys such as plain and blueberry bagels which I toasted, schmeared, and wrapped in aluminum foil, some cheddar cheese, barbecue pop chips (which by this point I was growing sick of because the salty yet delicious seasoning was rubbing my tongue raw) and a bag of granola.

I thought I was doing pretty well until I came across a curious item on the list. It called for a hot water bottle, or raw rice wrapped in a sock as an alternative. Strangely enough, I did have a sock full of rice around from when I was going through a bout of knee soreness earlier in the summer. The book said to microwave it for 3 to five minutes. In hindsight, I should have realized that it was way to early to microwave the rice, and that it wouldn't keep the heat by the time we got to the hospital. Sami was in no visible pain now and wouldn't be needing it. Still, I popped it in for five and of course, after about three and a half minutes, it started to smoke up the apartment. I took it out with a pair of tongs, dropped it in the sink and ran cold water over it which unleashed a heavy plume of acrid steam.

Here is the sock I burned

At 11:40 I sent an e-mail to my co-worker explaining what had happened and that I would not be in school tomorrow, and probably not Tuesday either. Soon after we were out the door with a backpack full of overnight stuff, a bag of snacks and the baby bag. I wanted to grab an umbrella, but Sami said no let's go. It was dark and quiet outside and usually there is a row of taxis that line the street outside our apartment. It is kind of like their hang out place where they smoke cigs and drink heavily sugared cups of coffee out of the 400 wan (40 cent) machine. At this moment, however, they were nowhere to be found and we had to walk an extra 10 minutes up the the busier area of town near the train station. We eventually found a taxi, and to show you what prudes we are, I have to explain that our biggest apprehension was that he wouldn't take a credit card. Here we are in the year 2011, and Sami and I are paying for everything in cash. The driver did take plastic, but he wasn't too friendly, even for a Korean taxi cab driver. Also, it started to rain a little bit on the drive and I was thinking I knew that we should have grabbed those umbrellas.

We got to the hospital at 12:30 am. First we went to the emergency room and they re-directed us to the Maternal and Child Health Center across the parking lot. We met Stacy, the back-up doula on the walk to the parking lot and then went in the the examination room where a young intern told us that Sami was 4cm dilated. I guess we wouldn't be transferring anywhere tonight. In our minds, we were half way to being parents already.