A Night to Remember - Heather's Birth Story.

I do have a difficult time admitting to the fact that I’m getting old. As we celebrate the birthday of our oldest this week, she’s 36, which means we are really old, I want to reflect on a night that changed our lives forever! Anne and I got married at a young age and according to her dad we were too young, too poor and too short, this was in reference to Anne not me and I know he believed this was too soon for him to loose his first child to wedlock.

We had an incredible life going to college together on the Central Coast of California. We were blessed to be able to live almost on the ocean for 2 years while Anne finished her degree and I got indoctrinated into doing concrete work the Hispanic Way! Our backyard was literally an estuary that would go between being a few feet of mush to five feet of water. The Eucalyptus trees that lined our gigantic backyard that was adjacent to Montana de Oro were incredible. We would go for long walks or jogs in the sand, which in a few hundred yards became the sand dunes. It was only a few minutes beyond the dunes that the amazing ocean captivated our minds and souls.

We were living our dream with being next to the ocean in a small town. We actually had our own garden paradise between the ocean, the dunes, quant little breakfast place and fancy restaurant that we would frequent on Friday nights. We made some friends that lived in our little Baywood – Los Osos town who gave, yes gave, us two horses. My Anne’s dream actually was coming true. She had always fantasized as a child actually being transformed into a horse or the more likely happening was to have our own horse. These new friends ended up in a situation where the county changed its regulations about wild life on an acre of land. They had to get rid of two horses almost over night.

This loss for them was at first sight a gain for us. We quickly found a place to board Buster and Tequila. Just as we acquired the horses we delightfully discovered that we were expecting our first! We were both elated and scared but the reality was that my Anne wouldn’t be riding any horses. This meant that I became the equestrian. Anne would actually walk behind me as I raced off with Buster in the sand and eventually made our way to the dunes only to discover that Buster had this fear of going over the dunes to the ocean. Never the less I had a great time riding and Anne was in mourning for a short time.

We lived around 30 minutes away from the hospital where our first would be born. Anne was still finishing her last quarter in college and I had already graduated the year before. We were rather naive about what to expect so assumed because nothing had really happened during our first trimester that we were doing well. Then the day came that we will always remember. It was a Friday and all of a sudden my Anne started to have contractions. We knew that it couldn’t be real because we were only six months along with another three before our little one would pop out.

Anne called up her doctor only to discover that he was out of town being with his daughter who was delivering her baby. We got the typical advice don’t worry about this and take it easy. Anne decided to stay home and take it slow. As the day progressed the contractions didn’t go away and we became concerned and a little scared. We called again and the on call doctor said maybe we should come in and get checked to be on the safe side.

As we pulled into the emergency side of the hospital I asked if a nurse could get a wheel chair for Anne. I explained that she was having what appeared to be real contractions but was only six months and clearly didn’t even look pregnant. As I parked the car the nurse conversed with Anne who was now in pain and had this scared look of a new mom. As I walked into the Emergency Room I realized that Anne had been taken back and I was told to sit and wait my turn to fill out the proper forms before I could go back and see her.

It seemed like it took hours to finish the forms for Anne to be seen and ultimately admitted that night. We had been watching Quincy on T.V. and really didn’t want to make the trek to San Luis from Los Osos. Yet, here I was waiting to be with my Anne but was forced to fill out these dumb forms. Just as I finished I was told that she was rushed to the delivery room and that our baby was on it’s way into this world. I got into an elevator to get the floor where our Heather would be born. We had decided on a girl’s name, Heather, this was Anne’s choice that had something to do with a horse. We couldn’t agree on a guy’s name.

As I arrived on the floor I was told that they were already delivering our little baby and that I couldn’t come into the delivery room because it was an emergency.  I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was still living the life of a young college student or I mean young couple and the last thing I expected was to be a parent of a premature baby by three months. I heard latter through Anne how horrible the doctor was who delivered Heather because he had no clue that this would be a premature birth and that she would come already totally dilated with Heather already coming into the world.

Anne would tell me later that they didn’t have any time to give her anything and that the pain was out of this world. The doctor had screamed at her a few times and actually lost it with the nurse because of the dangerous situation with our little one weighing only two pounds. Fortunately there was an older more experienced pediatrician on duty who came to the rescue to help our tiny baby and reassure us that there was still hope.

I saw Anne about an hour after the delivery and didn’t see Heather until a team of neonatal specialists had flown down from San Francisco to take her away to her new home. Heather had too many premature issues for this smaller hospital to help her. So Mt. Zion Hospital has a connection with this local facility to bring preemies to their unit that usually had twenty to thirty sick babies. This all seemed like a dream that I would awake and none of this would have happened. I tried to be reassuring to Anne and give her a sense that it would all be ok. Yet, I didn’t have any idea what was really going to happen in our lives over the next year.

I quickly called our parents and told them the news. The good thing for us was that my parents had just moved to the San Francisco area six months prior and actually ended up waiting at the hospital for Heather’s transfer into the neonatal unit. We were introduced to this hippie looking guy, who was the doctor and a nurse who later would become Heather’s primary helper. They had this incubator that had our little baby hidden with an assortment of tubes that covered most of her tiny little body. Our dream of having our first child in our garden paradise was not going to happen. We said a prayer over Heather and thanked the team as they flew off in a little Cessna plane back to San Fran.

We weren’t able to leave the hospital until the next day. Anne was very anxious to leave and see her baby, yet the doctors said we had to wait a day. My parents were delighted to greet their first grandkid as she was placed in the neonatal unit in this ancient hospital placed in the center of one of San Francisco’s worse neighborhoods. It was almost hilarious that Anne had a roommate, another mom, who gloated about having her thirteen-pound kid. Anne was almost embarrassed to admit that our little Heather was really a feather.

Anne was released the next afternoon and I decided that it was better for us to take the train up from San Luis to travel to San Francisco. My mom and dad met us at the train station with news about Heather and how she was doing. We were so excited to finally be close to her and begin the journey of Heather’s yearlong birthing process. They took us straight to Mt. Zion to enter into the world of tubes, instruments, strange noises and wearing robes, gloves and facemasks. As we pulled into the parking lot across from Mt. Zion we began a phase in our lives that changed us forever.

It wasn’t too long before we were sterilized and gowned to be able to see Heather who was lying flat on a little air mattress type of bed with a light glowing onto her frail little body. She looked like a frog that was being prepared to be dissected. Fortunately this wasn’t the case but she was so sick she could be in an incubator. We were able to touch her but not hold her for months to come. Our first discussion with the team of doctors was out of this world and at best I still thought we were in a dream that soon we would awaken back in our Los Osos paradise.

This dream has now become reality as we celebrate the 36^th birthday of our Heather. She amazed the doctors and the rest of us as she fought for her life as a preemie and over that first year captured the hearts of the nurses, doctors and her mom and dad!