Getting There

Fortunately the hospital wasn’t far, and I took a good route. I began to regain my confidence in the amount of time we had at our disposal now that we made it to the hospital.

I tried to park in the regular patient/visitor lot with the intention of having us walk to the Labor & Delivery department. Thank goodness there weren’t ANY parking spaces. I had no choice but to drive her through Emergency. It’s a good thing I did because when my wife stepped out of the car she practically collapsed from the pain.

The parking attendant actually had to grab us a wheel chair. It was a good thing too. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold her up during her next contraction. I had too many bags to carry. I had our overnight bag, her snack bag, my computer bag, and my CAMERA bag with 2 SLR camera bodies, 3 lenses, 2 flash units, a tripod, filters and more gear than any self respecting father to be would seen with at the hospital.

A sweet young volunteer offered to push my wife to Labor & Delivery department because clearly with the 2 backpacks, a duffle, snack back, and purse, I wasn’t going to manage on my own.

The volunteer must’ve none what kind of pain my wife was in because she rolled her through the long hallways at a snail’s pace. I was crumbling under the weight of our luggage (mostly my camera bag) wanting to load it up on my wife’s lap. I knew my complaints wouldn’t get any respect, so I was happy to share some with my wife at this point.

I felt like a real fool when hospital staffers started to clear the halls and move to the side as we approached. Their move was not for my wife was in a wheelchair, but because I had so many bags hanging off of me I was hogging the hallway. On staffer even asked us as we passed, “First one?” After I replied yes, he said “Yeah, I could tell by the luggage, you wouldn’t be carrying that much stuff had you been here before.” Yeah, yeah. Well we were here now. Thank goodness.