There is a saying that the best way to make God laugh is to tell him your plans. That's been true for us the past few years, but for some reason I expected the birth of Rory (aka Loaf, aka Doodle) to be different. In my mind, I was sure that our little miracle baby was going to arrive exactly as planned... or as I had planned. I felt that we earned to have a normal birth. Actually, nothing would be "normal" about his birth but I thought we deserved to have it be stress free. God felt differently, but in hindsight, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Here were my perfect plans. Rory was scheduled to be born via C-section on September 1st, a week earlier than his due date. Ryan and I had flights booked to North Carolina on August 22nd. We were going to visit family in Chapel Hill for a few days then hop around to different bed and breakfasts near our surrogate and the hospital. Our parents were scheduled to fly down on August 28th and we were all going to stay in Asheville to visit the Biltmore estate, go out to nice dinners and tour the wineries. It was a great way to decompress and distract ourselves before the baby arrived.
Ryan and I were supposed to be in the operating room during the C-section; it was going to be beautiful and emotional. I'd hold our surrogate's hand and Ryan would cut the umbilical cord. I had seen a few pictures of surrogate deliveries. I was always overwhelmed with emotions when looking at the parents' faces as they watched their highly anticipated baby be born into this world. That experience is what I had envisioned for us. I'd have a bed next to our surrogate where they'd immediately hand my baby to me for skin to skin . We'd later enter the waiting room all teary eyed and share the amazing news to our parents that our perfect son was born, and his name was Rory John. We'd all cry, hug and thank God that the day had finally come. Ryan and I would fly back with our baby a couple days later, and would let out a huge sigh of relief. We'd finally have our baby in our arms, at home. That wonderful part eventually did happen, but now I'll share how God had written the experience for us.
We were on our last day of a week long vacation at the shore where we had many last hurrahs.
It was a Saturday night. Our surrogate had a checkup the day before in which they said she was not dilated, which was expected as she was only 35 weeks. Ryan and I went to a bar at the beach around 5pm to meet some friends and only planned on staying for about two hours (Leggetts- shout out to Uncle Gary!). In true fashion, I was having a great time and wanted to stay longer. "This is probably our last night out before the baby comes!" is what I kept telling Ryan. Maybe it was maternal instincts and I had a sense, because I also purposely did not put my phone on Do Not Disturb for the first night ever before bed that night. We left the bar around 9pm and each ate 5 slices of pizza when we got back to Ryan's parent's house. I know that's extreme, and pretty gross, but little did we know it was very necessary because we wouldn't be eating another meal for a long while. We went to bed around 11pm.
At 2:30 am, I jumped up from the alert of a text. I had a missed call from our surrogate a minute earlier, and a text that said "By any chance, Y'all awake?" I went into the bathroom and called her. She said "Umm, my water just broke." "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yes. I'm heading to the hospital."
I said "Ok, stay calm. I know we need to do what is safest for you and the baby, but if by any chance they can hold off delivery, please have them do so. We will be there in 10 hours." "How are you getting here?" she asked. "I don't know. But we'll be there soon." I was in a state of shock and fueled by adrenaline and pizza.
I rushed into our room and threw all of our stuff into our bags. By stuff, I mean all of our dirty clothes and wet bathing suits we accumulated by the last day of our beach vacation. We didn't have a single baby item. I put the hospital name in Waze, filled several water bottles with sports hydration powder and grabbed a few bananas. I tossed our stuff into the car and woke up Ryan by saying, "We need to go, I'll drive. Lauren is in labor." Without waking anyone up, we were in the car within 10 minutes and driving south, during a torrential downpour and intense lightening storm. It was straight out of a movie.
We called our surrogate from the car. She told us that they had to perform an emergency C section to avoid infection, and it would happen within an hour. She had her friend with her and asked if we wanted her friend to send us pictures of the baby when he's born. We said no, we'd wait to see him when we got there in about 8 hours. We told her that we loved her and were praying for her and that everything would be perfect. We hung up and I gripped the steering wheel as hard as I could and screamed "What the actual F*ck!?!?!" We drove in complete silence until about an hour and a half later when her friend texted us, "He's here y'all. Congratulations. He's beautiful."
I'd be lying if I said that I felt an immense amount of joy in that moment. I felt a lot of emotions, but joy certainly wasn't at the forefront. There was anger, frustration, disappointment, abandonment, guilt and fear. This was NOT the way this was supposed to go. After all we've been through, the arrival of our son was going to be magical. This was chaos, although we somehow managed to remain calm. The next hour or so we made several attempts to get through to the hospital for updates on our baby boy's status. Finally, we were connected with one of the NICU nurses who told us that she couldn't give us any information until we got there. I nearly lost it on the sweet woman. (We met her a few days later and she told us that she was the nurse who spoke to me on the phone... she was scared to tell me because she felt so badly about that call. I assured her it was ok.) I VERY firmly said "I am his mother. I make all medical decisions for him. You have all of the paperwork and a court order stating this. We are 7 hours away...give me the status of my son, NOW." When she finally gave us an update, it was far from what we wanted to hear. He was doing "ok" and was on a ventilator. He was having trouble breathing since his lungs weren't fully developed yet, so they had to give him a dose of surfactant and put him on some support. My mind immediately went to Kiera. How could we possibly see another one of our babies in the NICU and on a ventilator? How could this even be possible? I was so incredibly fearful for our boy but also for me and Ryan. Could we survive God forbid losing another child? Ryan kept insisting that we switch and he take over the driving. But I knew that if I wasn't driving, I'd attempt to jump out of the car and run to North Carolina.
We eventually woke up our parents at around 7am by calling Ryan's mom first. "Hi Ry.. what's up?" She was very confused because to her knowledge, we were sleeping down the hall. "We're in the car. We're in Virginia" he answered. "Why...How did you get to Virginia!?" she asked. "He's here" Ryan said in a shocked voice. "WHAT???" The call went just about the exact same way with my mom. We told them we knew nothing other than that he was on a ventilator. You could actually hear the look of horror on the other end of the phone. We said we'd call them when we had more information.
The sweet NICU nurses told us to call every 10 minutes if we wanted to. We wanted to, but we called every hour instead. Each phone call got better. When we were about an hour away from the hospital, they told us that our little champ was taken off the respirator and was breathing perfectly fine on his own. That's the first time I really felt excitement and the joy. We knew that his big sister was helping him so that we did not need to see him the way we had seen her.
Ryan drove the second half of the trip. We pulled into the hospital parking lot and I felt paralyzed. I expected to jump out of the car and sprint through the doors, but I had a hard time even getting out of the passenger seat. I was shaking. After a few minutes, that subsided and we burst through that hospital. A nurse led us to our boy's room and they were able to film us walking in and meeting him. There are no words to describe what that felt like. He was tiny, and sweet, and perfect, and I was so in love. The NICU nurses didn't know anything about our story or about Kiera. However, they told us that our little boy must have had some guardian angel that morning because he was a different baby than he was a couple of hours ago. Although that typically wouldn't be comforting to hear, we were comforted knowing that it was the truth. We learned that his delivery was very complicated; they had a hard time getting Rory out and our surrogate was hemorrhaging badly. His discharge papers showed an Apgar score of 1 at birth (on a scale of 1-10) and listed his condition as Critical. His score went up to an 8 after a few minutes. Our surrogate recovered quickly as well.
For several months leading up to Rory's birth, I had lay awake many nights thinking about the possibility that I could miss it, which was one of my worst nightmares. However, God knew better. My worst nightmare actually would've been being in that delivery room watching the horror around us while Ryan and I experienced PTSD all over again. Instead, we were able to meet our baby a few hours later when he was safe and stable. Rory ripped that band aid right off and rushed into the world to meet us. I should've known that God's plan would be the perfect one.
Rory was born at 5:24 am on Sunday morning, weighing 5lbs 6oz and 19 inches long. We were discharged on Thursday afternoon. He had his own room in the NICU for those 5 days and the hospital was gracious enough to give us our own room downstairs (southern hospitality at it's finest). With the exception of sleeping, we spent almost all of our time in Rory's room. We did take a break for 3 meals a day in the hospital cafeteria which consisted of hot dogs and grilled cheeses. When we took a tour of the hospital at our 20 week ultrasound visit, our surrogate was telling us what an amazing NICU this hospital had. In my mind, it didn't matter because our baby would not need the NICU, it wasn't part of my plan. As it turns out, we're so fortunate that he was born in a Level 3 NICU hospital because they were incredible. Ryan and I are forever grateful for the nurses at Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory NC. They welcomed us, educated us, empathized with us and comforted us. There is a lot of sadness in the NICU which we had experienced firsthand with Kiera. But we were blessed that this time around, Rory was one of the strongest babies there. His room quickly turned into the hangout room where we chatted and laughed with the nurses. They learned all about our story of loss and surrogacy and asked many questions. Finally, one of the nurses asked "How are Y'all doing on clothes?" She either noticed we'd been repeating outfits for a few days, or she thought that we smelled. We admitted that we didn't have much. We swallowed our pride but excitedly accepted her offer to wash our dirty clothes in the NICU washing machine. It was one of the highlights of our week. That same nurse insisted we leave the hospital the night before we were possibly going to be discharged. At the end of her shift, she dropped us off at a wine bar to grab a bite to eat, and a celebratory drink. She said "I know Y'all have a crazy story, but one of my favorite things is how free-spirited Y'all are.. almost living a homeless like lifestyle." That brought a huge smile to our faces. Our baby was here, and that was all that we cared about.
Many people have asked us about our travel logistics. Since we drove down to NC in a panic, we had our car at the hospital. However, we had no idea when we'd be discharged and we still planned to fly home. Ryan's parents were awesome enough to fly down on Tuesday morning, meet us in the parking lot for 5 minutes (they couldn't come in due to covid restrictions) and drive our car back up north.
We had zero baby supplies with us. I figured we would prepare all of that the two weeks we had before heading down to NC. I also didn't want to retrieve any of the nursery furniture that we had stored in Ryan's brother's basement until our baby was actually home this time. Luckily, we had decided to order the car seat a few days before his birth and ship it directly to our surrogate's house, so her friend was able to bring that to the hospital. I have photos of Ryan breaking down boxes and assembling it at midnight in Rory's NICU room. The nurses said that was a first for them. Ryan's dad consults for a private aviation company so we were gifted our flight home with Rory. It was deemed a medical flight, which gave us priority on the ground and in the air. We were picked up from the hospital by a luxury SUV to take us to the airport. The nurses got such a kick out of it and came outside to send us off. They said Rory was the coolest baby they've ever met. The nurse who loved our "homeless like" lifestyle thought this was especially awesome. To bring things full circle, it was storming the day that we left as it had been the day that we drove down. That private flight was truly a life saver while traveling with a 5 day old preemie. The former commercial and military pilots said that this was by far the youngest passenger and most precious cargo they've ever flown. Amongst many beautiful things, the nurses made us thank you cards to give the pilots with Rory's footprints disguised as airplanes.
Once we were home, we were surrounded with an overflowing amount of love from family and friends. Many people said that they loved coming over, because the pure joy in our household was so contagious. Rory has continued to thrive and the doctors have called him perfect. We are blessed to have such an easy and chill baby. Maybe it's because he was "grown" in the south, but whatever it is, I'll take it. He often stares at the seemingly blank ceiling and giggles like crazy while his eyes follow something or someone back and forth. We know that it's his big sister playing with him and it warms our hearts. Our dream has come true and we feel happier and lighter each and every day. One of the nurses told us to always remember that the nights are long, but the years are short. Of course there are days when having a newborn can feel slightly overwhelming. On those days, I remind myself of what we've overcome. I look in Rory's bright eyes and know that my life is exactly as it should be, and I wouldn't change a thing.
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