My sister was visiting me on her way back from a trip to a far off land. It was really nice that she was able to extend her stopover a few days and visit with my wife and I. Well, it was nice but it was also a time of high tension as my wife was actually pregnant and would be giving birth to our child. I was supposed to go to work on Monday but considering the situation I thought I would just call in “sick” the next day perhaps even two. I would then be able to visit with my sister for one more day before she went home.
Well, as luck had it, at about 3:30 in the morning I had an even better excuse as “the time had come”. Well, not that second but by five am we were driving to the hospital, not sure of the protocol I asked my sister if she wanted to come to the hospital. She did and we checked in. They did a preliminary exam of my wife and then told us to walk around until things were a bit more advanced. So we wandered the halls like some sort of ghosts at 5:30 in the morning but then indeed it was our time as my wife’s water broke. We waddled up to the birthing station, which actually was mainly intended for (go figure) the women, midwife’s and the doctors.
There was no real place for my sister to sit despite what you see in the movies. However there was a very small table right outside the six birthing rooms and so she sat down to wait. I am not going to go into the details of the birth, but apparently even when some sort of local anesthesia is administered it can be a fairly loud process. Of course I was oblivious to all this as I was in a room that was fairly isolated from the other rooms, but my sister was not.
She was also quite the trooper that day, as she was sitting outside of six rooms with no place else she can go and is forced to listen to all these ladies in labor. I can only imagine that this may also be creating a sense of foreboding as she also wanted to have children when the time came.