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A special delivery
By Elly Akkermans from Holland,
translated by Ria Hendris-Akkermans
My husband Berry and I
are both 39 years old. We are married 15 years and we are both
working in the HealthCare. He is neurologic qualified nurse (male)
in a hospital. I am working as a qualified district nurse. We had
intentional chosen to have children when we were at a certain
age...not too young! When it was the time we wanted to have children
I didn't get pregnant spontaneous . We didn't get excited . Us
having children is okay, but when it was not happening spontaneous
we could live with that. We didn't like special medical intervention
to have children. The fact that we absolutely unexpected would have
a daughter , without any sign of pregnancy, is a real miracle.
Yes, I am rather strongly built and I put on some weight the
last months (Not that much though). I was planning to lose weight
in the summer, but had not begun yet. My menstruation was not very
regular and I didn't menstruate very much but I thought that
was because of my age. The only time I really felt sick . I
thought it was because I had Japanese food in a restaurant. I don't
smoke and I don't use any alcohol and this has it's influences on
the health of our baby.
I had a terrible
pain in my back !
"Hernia in the back" was diagnose of the doctor and he
left.
Friday the 31st of March
2000. This is a day I never will forget. The evening before I had a
meeting for work. One of my patients is a rather heavy woman and
while I took care of her, my back was beginning to ache. I thought I
strained myself in lifting the woman. I gave her some coffee and in
the meantime I went to another patient. After that I came back
as usual. The pain in my back however was that terrible I wasn't
able to help her anymore. So I went back to the office and asked
if a colleague could take over. They looked surprised because I
never complained so it was really bad now, they figured. They sent
me home and advised me to go to bed and to take a rest. I called
Berry (he said he would be home as soon as possible) and I made an
appointment to go to my doctor later that day( I was scheduled
for 2.30 . In the meantime the pain in my back was aggravating.
However when Berry came home and saw me he decided to phone the
doctor instantly to ask him to get over at once. The doctor did
arrive at 1.15 . He examined me and used standard procedures for
back pains and his diagnose was Hernia on the back or lumbago .
"You have to stay in bed." He prescribed painkillers
and Valium. At this time Berry had to go to his work, but first he
gave me a sleeping pill and helped me in bed. He was worrying .
Several times he phoned me from work at the hospital.
"She fell right out
of me!
We caught the placenta in a frying pan "
At 3.30 I couldn't
hold it, the pain was terrible. I decided to lay on the floor,
knowing that in case of a hernia it helps to lay down on a hard
floor or something like it.
So when Berry came home from work he found me laying on the floor.
In the meantime I was more or less in panic, because I never felt
that pain before in my life. Berry called the doctor again and he
advised us to take more medication and to lay down. Suddenly I
felt something in the lower part of my body and I was thinking of
bulge of the bowels. I asked Berry to take a look. With a lot of
pain I tried to get up and I was standing beside the bed, because
I was planning to lay down on the bed.. That was the moment I gave
birth to my daughter. It felt as if she was falling right out with
no contraction at all. Berry instantly pushed me on the bed and on
the same time he got hold of the baby. Both we weren't able to
speak at that time as surprised as we were. Very quickly after
that Maartje started to cry and cry........
As you can understand we didn't have anything in the house for
baby's and we didn't have anything to use for a delivery. So with
a shoelace the umbilical cord was tied off and after that it was
cut by a sewing scissors. The placenta was caught in a frying pan.
Despite our perplexity Berry luckily had the presence of mind to
take pictures . All of a sudden the pain in my back was gone and I
ended up laying in bed with my daughter covered in a towel .
Without any preparation we were mom and dad at this very moment.
It was very hard to comprehend .
" We hadn't
thought of a name, so at first
we called our baby just " Baby".
You can hardly explain what is going through your mind at a moment
such as this. After Berry looked if it was a boy or a girl he
phoned the doctor. The doctor was very angry with himself because
he didn't relate my complaints with the symptoms of a woman in
labor. We , however, don't blame him at all. How could he
have known that I had contractions.. I wasn't even aware of being
pregnant. Anyway , our daughter was born at 4.50 that day. At 5.00
a maternity nurse arrived and at 9.30 that evening we had
everything you need for a baby thanks to the doctor, friends
and neighbors. We had : a cradle , diapers, clothes and so on.
The first time we called our baby : " Baby" . It was not
until later that evening the nurse asked what name we had for our
" Baby". Because she was born on the last day of
March we gave our daughter the name "Maartje". (In Dutch
language March is Maart , so we called her " Little March
"= Maartje)
When we got over the shock we had to post the family. The twins of
my sister were just celebrating their birthday. The family was
gathered at my sisters house. Earlier that day I had called my
sister I couldn't be at the party because of the pain in my back..
Nobody could believe Berry's story when he told we had a daughter.
Right at the moment my sister saw the baby with her very own eyes
she could believe our story. My elderly mother-in-law was almost
in a state of shock, we thought we needed a doctor for her.
Happily for us Maartje wasn't born one day later, 1st of April,
because nobody would believe what happened in the first place.
We always thought such
story's only appear in the newspaper. Now we know it can happen in
real life.
Now we are over our
first shock and first perplexity. Our Doctor however warned us
there could be a reaction because our lives changed from one day
to another.
In spite of her total unexpected arrival she of course is hearty
welcome in our family.
Because we missed the feeling of pregnancy we are catching
up on that now. We read a lot about it, the baby bedroom is
finished now and within a few months the three of us are going for
a short holiday.
We are very, very
proud to be the parents of Maartje
Written by Elly Akkermans
Translated by Ria
Hendriks-Akkermans
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