I'm 44 years old and I have a 12 week old, 22 month old, 11 year old, and 20 year old. I guess technically I'll have a 29 year old in a year too, since Alex is marrying Ben Barlow - soon to be Ben VanDongen...I don't think he knows he's taking Alex's name yet.
Ok, on to the birth 12 weeks ago; the birth of Rhea Hope VanDongen. She was born on 2/18/2014 at 2:18 AM at Lake View Hospital in Bountiful. Cristal was surrounded by me and two nurses. We paid for a doctor, but, like Abigail, Rhea did not wait for the doctor.
February 18th was a Tuesday. The day before, Cristal's doctor had told her she was fine and likely had a couple weeks left before we needed to really be ready for the baby's birth. So that night Cristal and I had a conversation that went something like this - 'hey, the baby's not coming for a couple more weeks' - 'cool, lets not do anything to prepare for another week' - 'that sounds like a great idea'.
So we went to bed on February 17th hoping we'd have two kids born on February 28th. At about 1:30AM Cristal jumped out of bed and proclaimed, 'either I peed the bed or my water just broke'. Considering the fact that I'm the only adult in our household that has ever peed the bed, I thought it was highly unlikely Cristal had just done that. So we were off to the races.
Ally and Sam Chacon, our Nights in Shinning Armor, were there for us; as they have been countless other times in our lives. Ally had already warned us that we better call her in the middle of the night if we needed her, well, we needed her. She was at our house within 10 minutes to stay with Abigail.
We grabbed the go-bag, that was packed, despite our clear attempts at being slackers. So we were on the road, in my police car, with Sam timing the contractions within 10 minutes of Cristal waking up. Sam meticulously kept time of the contractions, asking if 45 second contractions 3 minutes apart was a good sign. We knew it pretty much meant we'd be lucky if we made it to the hospital.
Because we'd played this game before, we called the doctor on our way to hospital, as opposed to waiting to get there. We entered the ER at 2:08AM. The receptionist must of seen the urgency in our faces, she promptly dropped the paper work clipboard and got us directly to labor and delivery.
The labor and delivery nurses were fantastic; Heather and Sarah. Cristal and I told them the baby was coming NOW. I know, from being in a similarly chaotic profession, that you learn very fast that 'calm breeds calm and chaos breeds chaos'. The nurses were calm, cool, and collected and said, 'sure the baby is coming now, just lay back and enjoy the music and let us do our work...'
Cristal laid back, the nurse took one look, and the color drained from her face - the baby was coming. The nurse really did try to hide her surprise and concern at the impending birth without a doctor, and she may have convinced us that she wasn't concerned if we weren't trained to read body language. Although, I think even a novice crime solver would recognize 'WHOA, THAT BABY'S COMING NOW!' as an apparent surprise to the proclaimer.
I asked the obvious question, 'this is a hospital, isn't there a doctor somewhere?' The nurse smiled and said yes, but they're all scared of labor and delivery. For any man that has been by a woman's side during labor, that statement makes complete sense. So I shrugged my shoulders and got to work helping the nurse.
Within 10 minutes, Rhea was born. I have to say, Cristal is a walking birthing machine. Our forth child came completely natural, again. I've seen grown men cry more about a splinter than Cristal did that morning. In fact, Cristal pretty much ran the show.
Like all our kids, Rhea did not want to wait until the due date. She came three and a half weeks early; our earliest. She was healthy, but a bit a yellow (Jaundice) and really small. They put her under the lights for a night; she was not happy about that, but it worked. Her color returned. So far she's the darkest skinned of our all our kids, with the least amount of hair, and the darkest color hair.
We were out of the hospital within two days and on our way home to our next life adventure - two kids in diapers at the same time, one kid in college and engaged, and a boy in the middle that won't slow down for anything - what on earth are we thinking???
I know exactly what we're thinking. The heart's capacity for love is unlimited. Rhea just fills that cup with a little more love.
There has been no greater joy or adventure in our lives than our children. Cristal and I have had a lifetime of adventures, from ski and biking trips in our early years, to our high mountain adventure for our honeymoon in the northern Canadian Rockies, to our crazy public safety jobs. We love adventures. And what we've learned over the last 20 years is the adventure of parenthood is the greatest of them all. I can't wait to see what the next 20 years will bring.
