Thursday, 21 December 2017

December was a roller coaster ride with Mary's pregnancy.  We lived from Thursday to Thursday when she would go to the doctor to see if she could continue to carry the twins.  The larger twin was growing quite well and remained in the top 10% of growth for babies for his gestational stage.  The smaller twin continued to fall in size percentile for babies of his gestational stage.  They believed that his placenta was not providing full nourishment and etc.  So the trick is to decide at which point he is better off out of the womb and into the "hard, cold world".  When that time would come, both babies would be delivered.  I wavered back and forth whether to spend time getting ready to go to Peru or to be ready for Christmas day.  And thus, I was not very efficient at either task.

Finally on the Thursday morning of December 21st, the doctor indicated that he believed all was going well and that it was quite likely that the twins could make it to New Years's.  And I began to make plans to do Christmas at home.....putting off all of the things on my list that could wait until the 26th....The roller coaster was going up and I was full of plans!

Luckily, Mom had asked me to come and have lunch at Woodlands with her and Lynn Weston and Marilyn Cohen, so I didn't do the chore that made sense for that day:  GROCERY SHOPPING for the Christmas meal.  By 2:00 that afternoon, Mary was calling to say that she had begun bleeding and that she was on the way to the hospital.  And the roller coaster started down again.....I began to look for airplane tickets.

But the roller coaster ride continued as Mary would text to say it looked as if they would send her home....and then they had decided to do more tests....etc....Finally about dinner time, her text was that they were going to keep her overnight and it looked as if they would do a c-section on Saturday.  I began looking for tickets very seriously.  Delta had absolutely NOTHING!  That is our preferred route from CRW to Peru.  It was the Friday before Christmas and the biggest travel day of the year!  I called, I looked over and over....and finally reached the decision that I had to look for another route.

The best that I could find was with American:  Charlotte>Dallas>Peru.  I would arrive at 6:15 Saturday morning after flying all night.  Mary would go into the operating room at 6am.  I would miss seeing her, but it was the best that I could do.  So I bought the tickets and began packing.  Since then Alberto ended up coming back through Orlando on a Peruvian airline.  That might be something that I could try in the future as I could take a non-stop from Huntington to Orlando making it only two stops to Lima.

And I began finishing last minute Christmas "stuff" and packing in earnest.  Thank goodness I did not have a refrigerator full of groceries!