Meeting Matthew

Our Birth Mother told us that she was showing super early labor signs on Monday, March 22, 2010. Her checkup with the doctor the previous Thursday hadn't resulted in a change from the expectation that she would go overdue. Well, I was nervous about it, and after some prayer, Nick and I decided to head out on Thursday night. Well, early Thursday, the birth mother let us know she had been having contractions all night, and her mom was taking her to the hospital. I was on pins and needles, and wanted to start driving right then. Nick had to run into work as he was trying to fit 6 days worth of work into 2 days in order to leave early. He was a true sport, and his boss was awesome and let him leave almost as soon as he arrived. When he got home, we threw the car together, and left. In the meantime, the birth mother had gone to the hospital. She wasn't far enough along to check in, so they gave her pain meds, and sent her home. We got on the road and started driving. We kept getting updates, and found out she went back to the hospital after dinner. We were driving through Ohio when her water was broke. Not 20 minutes later, we got the phone call. No voice, just some crying! We were hearing our baby's first cry!!! We immediately started getting pictures sent to our phones. We pulled over at the next rest stop about 30 miles from Cleveland, OH. We called parents, and sent texts to friends, and viewed with wonder our little boy.

Unfortunately, we still had about 28 hours to go to get to him. We were on an adrenaline high, so we kept driving, and driving, and driving. We planned to stop on the West Side of Chicago. Great plan, except we passed the hotel where we had made our reservation. The next hotels were all fully booked. We stopped about 7am Friday March 26, 2010 at a rest stop and slept for 2 hours. We were still super excited, and wanted to get to our baby. Then back on the road. We spoke to family throughout the day. We also made a reservation in Cheyenne, WY. We arrived in Cheyenne around midnight. We were so exhausted, we crashed into bed, and slept. I'm very happy we did as a storm rolled through Wyoming while we slept. We ended up driving through crappy weather, almost white out conditions from Cheyenne to Rawlins. Then, it cleared right up. We saw semis jackknifed on the side of the road, and cars being pulled out of ditches. We knew that stopping was the best thing we could have done.

We finally got to the hospital about 3pm on Saturday, March 27, 2010. It was so exciting to hold my baby. We were able to check him out of the hospital and head to our temporary home.