The start of parenthood
Hubby was the last person laid off at the trucking company where he worked in administration, just as we had our fingers crossed that we were pregnant. (I know, I not we, don't quibble. It's how it was to us.) We had to figure out how to take care of this, and we had the funds set aside for a normal hospital cost, and managed to almost not touch them even though there was still no employment for another year. I had to give up my doctor in favor of the lower costs of becoming a patient of the University Hospital's residents' clinic. Not really an 'in favor' type choice, but at least it was a viable choice.
(We will pause for a moment to offer to posterity the you-won't-believe-this information on what those relative costs were: the normal delivery fee for the OB was $350, and the cost per visit with the hospital residents was $4, with no delivery fee. [The OB fee was $4,000 for Carole.] You got whoever you got on duty, and I did luck out and get the head resident to deliver, who had seen me once, assisted by a guy I liked. The anticipated hospital fees were $400 or so, for four days, which was standard maternity admission time, just coming down from five. Unemployment benefits for Hubby were $93 a week, if I remember correctly.)
If you're all done sputtering now, ... we were living in upstairs rooms in the house my grandfather grew up in, owned at that point by my great-aunt. (The house is still in the family.) Rent was cheap ($65/month vs. $110 for a normal apartment), we were broke, and we were available to do such things as take out the garbage and shovel snow. We would have moved out at the point that we had this baby, but we couldn't afford to, so my great-aunt patiently suffered a crying baby at all hours.
My mother came out early, on the logical premise that with a first baby, you never knew if it would be early or late. Luckily, it was summer and as a schoolteacher her schedule was wide open. I was due July 21, and Hubby was scheduled to take the bar exam on the 30th. He had been delayed in his graduation and had not taken the bar on the normal schedule with his class, had found work, and kind of tabled the matter; now it was imperative. He kept saying, as my due date passed, that he knew what was going to happen-- I would be having this baby at two in the morning the night before the bar exam.
Mom had been out in Salt Lake for a while, and staying with her brother and sister-in-law, but when I still hadn't gone into labor on the 29th, she moved over into Aunt Elizabeth's with us on general principles. Just in case.
When the first contraction woke me up, I rolled over and looked at the clock, and thought, "You've got to be kidding." Yup, you got it, the clock said 2:0-something. WELL, I wasn't actually delivering at two in the morning, but I was certainly up against the bar exam, which wasn't negotiable. There wouldn't be another sitting for six months and we would lose the fees. This was ridiculous, but there was nothing to be done--I woke up my mother quietly and got ready to go. Woke up Hubby before we left and told him good luck.
So my mother took me to the hospital, stayed with me until she had to go back and get Hubby to take him to the bar exam, then came back and found that things had speeded up and she had missed it. Baby girl was fine, she went off to spend time with her siblings up the canyon (no phone) while I was in the hospital, with my blessing. She hadn't been able to join them without knowing when I would need her, and right now she could vanish for a couple of days.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up and was thinking it was time for someone to bring my baby back, I had a solemn-faced young doctor come in and tell me that I couldn't have my daughter brought in because she had turned blue and was just taken to the ICU. It was possible that she had a hole in her heart, but they didn't know for sure until they did some tests. If so, we would be eligible for the state's crippled children's fund for assistance. It was also possible that it was a simple problem of relying on the fetal oxygen supply system, and the automatic shutting off of that (ductis arteriosis) hadn't happened. It could resolve spontaneously or, if it didn't, they could operate. They would do a cardiac catheterization to find out. (That's not as scary as it sounds, for a newborn they just go in through the umbilicus.)
So Hubby calls the hospital on his lunch hour, and finds that the switchboard is down; he can't speak to me, but the person thinks she remembers that my baby was a girl, knows for sure that I delivered. When the day is done, he comes to the hospital to find that he does have a new daughter but she is in intensive care, and he goes to see her first and find out what is happening, then comes to wheel me down. I have been very shaky (and alone) and have not seen her yet since the delivery room, almost ten hours ago. She is on oxygen in a headbox, not on a vent, which is encouraging, but all I can do is touch her with a finger.
The problem was patent ductus and it did solve itself, and she was back in the regular nursery the next day. Her 24 hours in the NICU doubled our hospital bill, and we were still unemployed, but it wasn't too bad considering the alternatives.
The new daddy went to the first day of the bar exam knowing that his first child was being born. He went to the second day of the exam fearing that his new daughter would need open-heart surgery. He went to the third and final day knowing she was all right, but the whole thing wasn't what you would call an optimal situation for analytical concentration, and he failed the exam by three points. But we came home with a healthy baby girl whom we named Emily. Her grandfather Jeppson arrived, as a scheduled stop on a cross-country business trip, (with the Leebs, a French artist and his wife) and was able to participate in her blessing along with her Utah grandpa. When he left, my mother went with him.
This picture was taken the Sunday that she was blessed, out on the lawn swing in the garden. Since my mother lived on the east coast, I think this is the only four generation picture we ever had of baby, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She was only eleven days old, and it wasn't Fast Sunday, but the bishop gave permission because my father was there; otherwise we would have waited a little.
As they say, all's well that ends well, and this story definitely ends well, because Emily is now grown and a mother herself, waiting for a new child to join the first three, who are thriving.
(We will pause for a moment to offer to posterity the you-won't-believe-this information on what those relative costs were: the normal delivery fee for the OB was $350, and the cost per visit with the hospital residents was $4, with no delivery fee. [The OB fee was $4,000 for Carole.] You got whoever you got on duty, and I did luck out and get the head resident to deliver, who had seen me once, assisted by a guy I liked. The anticipated hospital fees were $400 or so, for four days, which was standard maternity admission time, just coming down from five. Unemployment benefits for Hubby were $93 a week, if I remember correctly.)
If you're all done sputtering now, ... we were living in upstairs rooms in the house my grandfather grew up in, owned at that point by my great-aunt. (The house is still in the family.) Rent was cheap ($65/month vs. $110 for a normal apartment), we were broke, and we were available to do such things as take out the garbage and shovel snow. We would have moved out at the point that we had this baby, but we couldn't afford to, so my great-aunt patiently suffered a crying baby at all hours.
My mother came out early, on the logical premise that with a first baby, you never knew if it would be early or late. Luckily, it was summer and as a schoolteacher her schedule was wide open. I was due July 21, and Hubby was scheduled to take the bar exam on the 30th. He had been delayed in his graduation and had not taken the bar on the normal schedule with his class, had found work, and kind of tabled the matter; now it was imperative. He kept saying, as my due date passed, that he knew what was going to happen-- I would be having this baby at two in the morning the night before the bar exam.
Mom had been out in Salt Lake for a while, and staying with her brother and sister-in-law, but when I still hadn't gone into labor on the 29th, she moved over into Aunt Elizabeth's with us on general principles. Just in case.
When the first contraction woke me up, I rolled over and looked at the clock, and thought, "You've got to be kidding." Yup, you got it, the clock said 2:0-something. WELL, I wasn't actually delivering at two in the morning, but I was certainly up against the bar exam, which wasn't negotiable. There wouldn't be another sitting for six months and we would lose the fees. This was ridiculous, but there was nothing to be done--I woke up my mother quietly and got ready to go. Woke up Hubby before we left and told him good luck.
So my mother took me to the hospital, stayed with me until she had to go back and get Hubby to take him to the bar exam, then came back and found that things had speeded up and she had missed it. Baby girl was fine, she went off to spend time with her siblings up the canyon (no phone) while I was in the hospital, with my blessing. She hadn't been able to join them without knowing when I would need her, and right now she could vanish for a couple of days.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up and was thinking it was time for someone to bring my baby back, I had a solemn-faced young doctor come in and tell me that I couldn't have my daughter brought in because she had turned blue and was just taken to the ICU. It was possible that she had a hole in her heart, but they didn't know for sure until they did some tests. If so, we would be eligible for the state's crippled children's fund for assistance. It was also possible that it was a simple problem of relying on the fetal oxygen supply system, and the automatic shutting off of that (ductis arteriosis) hadn't happened. It could resolve spontaneously or, if it didn't, they could operate. They would do a cardiac catheterization to find out. (That's not as scary as it sounds, for a newborn they just go in through the umbilicus.)
So Hubby calls the hospital on his lunch hour, and finds that the switchboard is down; he can't speak to me, but the person thinks she remembers that my baby was a girl, knows for sure that I delivered. When the day is done, he comes to the hospital to find that he does have a new daughter but she is in intensive care, and he goes to see her first and find out what is happening, then comes to wheel me down. I have been very shaky (and alone) and have not seen her yet since the delivery room, almost ten hours ago. She is on oxygen in a headbox, not on a vent, which is encouraging, but all I can do is touch her with a finger.
The problem was patent ductus and it did solve itself, and she was back in the regular nursery the next day. Her 24 hours in the NICU doubled our hospital bill, and we were still unemployed, but it wasn't too bad considering the alternatives.
The new daddy went to the first day of the bar exam knowing that his first child was being born. He went to the second day of the exam fearing that his new daughter would need open-heart surgery. He went to the third and final day knowing she was all right, but the whole thing wasn't what you would call an optimal situation for analytical concentration, and he failed the exam by three points. But we came home with a healthy baby girl whom we named Emily. Her grandfather Jeppson arrived, as a scheduled stop on a cross-country business trip, (with the Leebs, a French artist and his wife) and was able to participate in her blessing along with her Utah grandpa. When he left, my mother went with him.
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| Four generations |
As they say, all's well that ends well, and this story definitely ends well, because Emily is now grown and a mother herself, waiting for a new child to join the first three, who are thriving.
Wow! What a story! And you all persevered!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations!