I have to admit it was a little emotional saying goodbye to everyone that night. Over the past three days, it felt like we were already a part of their family. But luckily, Matthew and I knew that this goodbye was only for a short period of time: In just a few months, Baby T-Rex would make her arrival. We were extremely excited about what the future held for our entire family, which had now grown much larger.
As the summer quickly started to fade, we knew it could be weeks or merely days before we had to make the 1,128-mile trip back to Abilene for the birth of Baby T-Rex. When you’re on “baby time,” there are no easy planning or travel solutions. Blogs, books, lists, parenting forums and workshops do not prepare you for getting a phone call saying the expecting mom is at the hospital with contractions and you are over a thousand miles away.
As we entered the last five weeks of pregnancy, Matthew and I worked through several available options to get us to the hospital as quickly as possible. We had tentative travel plans to arrive in Abilene a week before the due date. But what if the baby decided to make her appearance sooner? There was an alternative plan in place for that: One of us would be on the first available flight and the other would drive. We also made arrangements for our cats, mowing the lawn and anything else we could think of. The goal was to have everything packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice by mid-August.
It was the second Thursday in August when we received the news that Mercy’s labor could be imminent. I hate to admit it, but Matthew and I were definitely caught off guard. It seemed as if clothing, baby clothes, diapers, cameras and cats were flying in every direction. The car was packed full with what felt like half our house and a car seat was securely in place. Everything happened extremely fast. Anxiety and excitement took complete control.
On this particular Thursday, travel by air wasn’t an option, so Matthew and I both buckled in and began the seventeen-hour drive to Texas. We received numerous text updates from Mercy’s family throughout the evening. The miles were slowly ticking off. I swore the odometer was not working correctly. Our late night turned into early morning and there had been no change in Mercy’s condition. When we reached Memphis, Tennessee, we decided to stop and get some much-needed sleep.
As the sun rose on a hot and humid Friday morning in west Tennessee, we learned that Mercy’s imminent labor was a false alarm. The expecting mother had a stalled labor and was now receiving medication to stop the contractions. Everyone was grateful that she was resting comfortably. Matthew and I took a deep breath, smiled and buckled in for our trip back home.
After arriving in Johnson City and unpacking the car, we began creating a staging area in our guest bedroom for everything we wanted to take with us on the real trip. Bags and containers were unpacked and repacked more efficiently. The false alarm had been a practice drill that we were able to learn from. Without question, it was an exhausting twenty-four hours, but we made sure that we were better prepared for the next call. Now Matthew and I were ready to leave at any given moment.
Monday, August 19, 2013, started just like any other day. It was business as usual and we were still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby T-Rex. Only ten days had passed since our false-alarm trip across the state of Tennessee. Travel plans were being finalized and time away from work had been scheduled. Only twenty-three days until the due date. Then everything completely changed with four text messages:
Dilated 6
We are on our way to labor and delivery
We are having baby tonight
Wahoo
Reading those four messages created feelings of anxiety, excitement and stress. The baby was coming tonight? Seriously? My first phone call was to Matthew while he was still at work. When he answered, I could only muster up a three-word phrase: “Leave work now!”
The next hour included packing clothes, stacking up bags and crates in the car, checking on available flights to Texas, calling our parents and waiting for Matthew to make the thirty-minute drive home from work. We had already experienced our practice drill, so we were prepared to leave as quickly as possible. All in all, it took ninety minutes from the phone call to when we pulled out of the driveway. As the garage door was closing, I thought to myself, The next time it opens, we’ll have our daughter with us and be a family of three.
Matthew and I had barely driven fifty miles before we were hit with the reality of just how long it was going to take to get to Texas. The GPS indicated that we still had seventeen hours to go. In the past, we had talked about listening to an audiobook together, so what better time to try one than now? A quick stop at a bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was already over the idea. I hadn’t even heard of half the books available. One of the few titles we recognized was The Help, so forty-nine dollars later and we were back on the road. By Disc 1, Track 3, I was already lost and had no idea what was happening in the story. We had seen the movie while it was still playing in theaters and yet I couldn’t even keep up with someone reading the story to me. This was going to be a long trip.
The miles seemed to pass slowly and the chapters of the book even slower. We both regularly checked our phones for updates from the labor and delivery floor at the hospital. The current plan was to induce Mercy at 8:00 A.M. the next morning. Our GPS indicated that if we continued to drive through the night, we would arrive at 9:15 A.M. Everything appeared to be happening in our favor. Then we received a text message saying that the medical staff had broken Mercy’s water. What? We had just driven through Nashville, Tennessee, and still had hundreds of miles to go.
Less than two hours later, as we were speeding toward the Tennessee state line, we received two more text messages:
Hopefully she won’t have to push for long
Liz says she is done
The baby was here? We were dads! Matthew and I needed a moment to process this, so we took the next available exit off I-40 in Jackson, Tennessee, to fill the car up with gasoline and grab a quick bite to eat.
As I was sitting down with my food, my phone vibrated with another text message. This time it was a small image. It had to be a picture of our daughter. I held off looking at the picture until Matthew seated himself next to me in the booth. We clicked the image and it grew bigger. There she was! The very first picture of our daughter. Reminiscing about that moment still gets me a little choked up: two guys, same side of the booth, looking at a phone and getting very emotional at a fast food restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee. It was definitely a head turner.
After discarding the half-eaten fast food, we hopped back in the car and continued to process everything that was happening. Matthew drove around to the back of the building and that’s when the tears began to flow. Our world had just changed forever. It was very tough to let that reality sink in. There was definitely some sadness about missing her birth, but we were still happy and very excited. It was hard to believe the baby was finally here. We really wanted to be at the hospital with Mercy and Dylan, but were elated that both mother and baby were doing fine.
Before pulling back onto the interstate, we got all of the information that any parent should be able to rattle off to a random stranger. Harper Wade Darnell was born August 19, 2013, at 8:24 P.M. She weighed 5 pounds, 9.6 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Harper was given my last name. Her middle name is the last name of one of Matthew’s great grandmothers.
Exhaustion had set in. It was well past midnight by the time we crossed into Arkansas. My excitement—or lack thereof—for The Help had not changed. I found myself constantly checking the CD info display. Disc 5, Track 13. Sigh…We were barely able to keep our eyes open, so we chose to stop for a brief nap and a refreshing shower.
Our alarm went off at 6:00 A.M. the next morning and it was time to start the day. Excitement and nerves were overpowering: We were anxious to meet our new baby girl. We had five hundred miles left to go and I immediately wondered if Matthew had forgotten about The Help. No such luck! Disc 6.
Arkadelphia, Texarkana, Dallas…Abilene! Eight hours later, we could