Cassandra

Me and Amanda waiting if Cassandra will be coming out that night.

My wife and I went to her OB last October 14 for a checkup after Amanda's school.  Since she'll be on CS, we were very confident about the date of Cassandra's birthday which we scheduled on October 24.  After the checkup, our doctor advise us to make it earlier since she'll be 38 weeks on the 15th and there might be a possibility that she will have contractions.  So we decided to take the October 20 slot since Amanda has a UN activity in their school on the 24th and we don't want to miss it.

In the afternoon, we went to Amanda's pedia (my cousin) to give her a booster shot.  I must give credit to Cali as she was able to prepare her well for the injection as every night, she was telling bed time stories about Pirate Modi to her.  You might want to check it out here as Amanda was able to emulate Pirate Modi's courage on conquering a shot.

So after the checkup we went home and took a nice early dinner so we could take a rest to prepare for school and work the following day.  Imagine a movie scene...at about 11pm, everyone was asleep, it was raining extra hard... Cali woke up saying she's having a tummy ache.  We tried to observe if it would go away... and yes it did... but then it went back... and then stop again... and then went on again... and it went on consistently which is a sign of contraction.  We tried to deny that it was indeed a contraction since we were not yet totally prepared and would want at least another weekend before Cassandra comes out.  After texting doc she immediately instructed us to go to the hospital to monitor and check the baby.


So, I carried my office bag, an ultra sleepy Amanda, an umbrella and jacket while Cali tried to bring whatever she could think of.  Since it was raining hard during that time, it took extra time to load up in the car.  Driving up to the hospital is even trickier as I can't speed up too much as we might all end up in the emergency room rather than the delivery room.

After a 45-minute drive in the rain, we finally reached the hospital.  It was difficult getting the wheelchair with one hand and an Ate Champee on the other to push Cali towards the delivery room but we were able to make.  After an hour of monitoring, our doctor advised that they've scheduled the operation by lunch time on the 15th.  So I did the paper works and the billing so we could get a room ready.  Unfortunately, since this was unexpected we left our check and our cards can't cover for the bill.  So I have to request to talk back to Cali in the DR.  At that time, Champee was excited to see her, but she was in pain as we didn't know that she was actually in labor.  She went back for some monitoring again as I tried to call up my brother and ask for a favor if he could help me out.  While waiting for him, the doctors called me and said that they needed to do the operation right away at 3am as they can't wait for lunch time anymore.

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October 15, 2014 3:30 AM PST - Cassandra was born.

Some things I realized on Cassandra's birth:

• We're so blessed to have a wonderful family -  My brother was there to help me out in a very odd time; my mom in law hurriedly went to help us out during our four days stay in the hospital and our entire family who gave Cassandra a welcome home party complete with cakes and balloons.
• Sometimes, no matter how much we prepared and wanted to dictate God how we want things to happen because we thought it was the best, He always have a brilliant plan that are two, three or even a thousand steps ahead of what we think… Dra. Gali (Cali's OB) said, Cassandra got two cord coils and that she had a hard time removing them to the point that Cassandra was already gasping for breath. If we insisted on doing the CS operation by Monday because we thought it was more convenient, we could have lost her.
• God has created a natural way to keep our kids out of danger.  I believe the contractions were already an indicator that something's wrong with Cassandra and that she needs to come out soon.
  
• The best laid plans are plans that allow room for God to move. God has given us wisdom and talent to prepare and layout our game plan.  But these plans should be dynamic enough to make adjustments when God calls us to move on a different direction. A year ago, we lost a baby on its fourth week.  If we were so engulfed with sorrow, we couldn't have enjoyed Amanda's preschool moments, served our community more, helped other parents who experienced the same pain and of course, enjoy Cassandra as our new reminder of God's faithfulness.

To Cassandra, our new bundle of joy, say hello to the world!

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