Ashley's
anencephalic Story

Finally the night arrived!  Pam started feeling labor pains.  We called the hospital to ask what we should do.  Pam is a nurse and she knew when she really needed to go.  She knew the characteristics of Braxton Hicks syndrome and she didn’t think this was it.  The hospital however, told us to wait a while before coming in.  I believe that this was about 9 or 10 pm at night.  Pam decided to take a nice warm bath.  I think that helped a little bit, but she wasn’t quite sure.  She was still having contractions though.

Finally about 10 or 11 p.m., we called the hospital back and they said to come ahead.  So we got everything ready in the car and started off.  We probably weren’t as prepared as we needed to be. We drove to Kalamazoo approximately an hour away at 11 or 12 p.m. that night.  I think we talked a little bit, but Pam was having some pain, so we tried to not talk and make her as comfortable as possible.  The bumping and jarring of the car didn’t help any though.  I think that we got there around 1 or 1:30 a.m.

Well, we weren’t sure if we were ready to do this thing.  The Lord was going to have to help us through this part, but we knew that he hadn’t deserted us yet, and wasn’t going to desert us now.

We entered the hospital through the emergency entrance since all other entrances were locked.  We told them that we knew right where we were going and they told us to go right on up.  So we took the elevator to the OB floor.  They took Pam to a room right away, but I got stuck filling out forms.  The forms weren’t to bad and I was soon in the room with Pam
They got her in bed and did an initial check to see how she was progressing.  The progression was very slow.