False Alarm

Today at five in the morning, while busily browsing through my favorite blogs, my mom walked into the room and told me my sister's in labor. I shrieked in delight (cause we've been witing for this baby for like forever, and besides, she's two days over due, so it's about time) and quickly put on my jeans and sweater.

I went downstairs to find my sister on the couch clutching her tummy. It turned out that she's been having mild contractions since last night, and this morning when she got up and went to the bathroom, she found a little bleeding, which of course caused her to panic and call the doctor right away.

We quickly drove to the hospital. I wondered why my sister wasn't screaming with pain, and I even joked around with her, saying, she's the most silent pregnant woman I know who's about to go on delivery. Not that I knew a lot of pregnant women. In fact, she's the only pregnant woman I've seen in labor, well, not counting all those movies I've watched of women screaming with pain and cursing like sailors. So of course, you could imagine my amazement on how she could handle such pain.

So, they hooked her up on this machine where you can monitor the contractions, and the baby's heart beat. Everytime I would see the line about to go up on the monitor, I would tell her another contraction is coming. You can't even begin to describe the look on her face.

And then horror of horrors, I forgot my camera in my car. I meant to document all her labor pains and all. So I went back on the parking lot to get it. But when I got back in the room I realized that I forgot the batteries. They were in my bag... in my car... on the parking lot. So i decided to ditch that idea, and just stayed in the room with her.

It took such a long time for the doctor to see her. We were in the hospital at around six in the morning, and the doctor went in to check on her at around eight am. By that time, I was just so tired, because I worked the night before and I didn't get any sleep yet. So, we waited for another hour, and I was already begging my niece to come out because I got tired of waiting. My sister said labor could take 12 hours sometimes.

At around nine thirty, the doctor came back to check on her, and she said that it's not the real thing yet. She said it's probably just early labor. Apparently, you'd know if it's the real thing if you can't even close your eyes because of the pain. She made my sister go home, and take a rest. She said it could still take days before the real labor arrives.

I can't wait for my niece to be born in this world. But at the same time, I' also scared for her. She's going to be born into this imperfect world. I'm so terrified. I would want her to grow up to be a nice kid. And I hope that we could still be able to instill Filipino values in her even though we live here in New Jersey.