The long awaited details

I'm finally able to give you all the details from Monday. Allow me to break this down:

I woke up late on Monday and I couldn't get it together. It took forever to get out of bed. Watching the news, I found out that there was severe weather possibly leading to tornadoes (which I really REALLY don't do well. Give me 3 feet of snow any day in comparison to a tornado!) heading to my area during the day. That kind of weather just doesn't sit well with me and I started to get nervous about the weather. Then, I got a phone call from the church office. It was the church administrator, Becky, calling with a message from a member. Her daughter was in the hospital  having her second child. I told her that I'd be in a little late because I would be going to the hospital to be with my soon to be mother.

I got the address for the hospital, made sure that Ross would be safe in case a tornado did come through my apartment complex, got another call saying that mom was having an emergency c-section because of the baby being in distress, and headed out the door. I went to go get in my car, Ella, to go to the hospital. I got to my garage to find that Ella's dome light been on all night. I have no idea how it got turned on! I knew that my battery was dead but I got into Ella and tried to start her up anyways. I couldn't get Ella started. So I then had the task of figuring out how to get Ella out of my garage so that someone could come jump her. After figuring out that putting Ella in accessory would allow me to put her in reverse and push her out of the garage (Did I mention that I did all of this in heels?). It took me about an hour and several phone calls to get someone to come jump Ella.

I plugged in the address for the hospital into my GPS (Thanks Mom and Dad) and headed to the hospital. There wasn't much traffic and I made it to the hospital with no problem. I was met outside the hospital by a few of this mother's family and went on inside. It was starting to rain on our way in letting me know that the bad weather was starting to head in. The family and I were met by my boss, Cliff, and headed on up to see the baby in the nursery. He is adorable and super tiny (in comparison to my brother and I). He weighed in at 6 lbs 14 onc 19 inches long. After we saw the baby, we went back downstairs to the main lobby to wait for the new baby's grandpa.

While we waited for grandpa, the bad weather really came in hard. All we could see from the lobby was the rain blowing sideways. Me, being the curious Northerner that I am, went over to the sliding doors with a few other women to get a better look at the rain. One of the women got a little too close to the sensor and the door opened letting all of the wind and rain come rushing into the lobby. According to Cliff, it looked like we were going to get sucked out of the lobby. The wind was so strong that it popped the door so that it couldn't close. Within 15 seconds, some kind of alarm starts going off. No directions were given as to what to do. We all just kinda stood there wondering what to do. Cliff and I, almost like it was programed into our DNA, reached for our smartphones to check the weather. I discovered that we were under a tornado warning and shared this information with the rest of the group.

After standing around in a lobby full of windows during a tornado warning and the baby's grandpa arrived safely, we all decided to head back up to the nursery so that grandpa could see his new grandson. We went to take the elevator and were told that the elevators were out of order. So we decided to walk up to the 6th floor to see the baby (Remember, I'm still in heels and the stairway was full of people). We get over to the nursery and look out the windows across from the nursery to see all kinds of debris on the roof that had blown off in the storm. It turned out that we couldn't see the baby because all of the babies in the nursery were moved to an inner hallway preventing any possible injury to them. Apparently, a few windows had broken in the hospital and they were just being cautious.

About another half hour later (I made it to the hospital around 11 am local time and it was about 12:30 pm local time), we finally got to see the mother! She looked wonderful and was anxious to meet her little boy. Once all the nasty weather had gone through and the elevators started working again, mother and son finally got to meet. It was really sweet to see that first time meeting. Grandma was the first to hold him after mom, then grandpa, followed by his uncle. Then it was my turn! It's really a special thing to hold a child that's less than 6 hours old that isn't your's. That means that you're trusted with that child and that is a great honor.  It's things like that level of trust that make my job totally worth it!

I finally left the hospital around 2 pm local time and attempted to make the drive back to the church office. I prayed that Ella would start on the first shot and that there wasn't anything really wrong with her. I also prayed that I was able to travel back to the church office without any major trouble. Outside the hospital, there were tree limbs across some of the roads and some crazy intersections that didn't have power which meant no traffic signals. What took me 20 minutes the following day, took me 40 minutes to travel because of several traffic lights being out and trying to navigate the debris on the roads. I did learn some more back roads because of all of this which is always a plus.

Now, this isn't all horrible drama. It's wonderful and stressful drama. Looking back, I don't think that I would change a thing about that day because I learned so much valuable information. I wouldn't request all of those events to happen in one day again but now I know how to better handle the unexpected!