The Birth Story - Part One

This may end up being a long story so I will break it into parts. So much happened during the 10 days I was hospitalized, that now much of it is a blur. I wish I had been able to journal all that happened in the moment. So to my best recollection, this is how Julia's birth went down...

I am going to start a few days before Christmas. George's brother was getting married in Kenya on December 28th. Because I was going to be 31 weeks along and already very uncomfortable, we decided just George would make the trip to Kisumu. A 12 hour drive would have been too much to handle. Especially since we would be making the trip again one month later to prepare for Julia's delivery. Her due date was February 21st/22nd, Eli was two weeks early so we thought we would add another week on top of that and plan to be in Kisumu by February 1st to ensure plenty of time before her arrival. Eli's pregnancy and delivery was easy and problem free so we expected the same with Julia. I was very bummed to be missing the wedding, but there was no other way.

George was scheduled to drive to Kenya on Christmas Eve, be there for a few days to help with wedding preparations and then return a couple days after the wedding. Over all, he may have been gone for 5-6 days. We had a medical outreach scheduled for January 3rd so he had to be back before then to prepare for it.

As George began to prepare for his trip, it seemed like we were under spiritual attack. So many things happened, we couldn't believe it. A bunch of stuff happened with the car... there was a hole in the exhaust system, the steering column (not the wheel, the whole steering contraption) was about 10 minutes from falling down, the bolts fell off in the mechanic's hands as he looked at another problem, a door handle came off, we couldn't get a copy of our Kenyan insurance, the brakes went bad, there were alignment problems...it just went on and on. It wasn't just car stuff, other things happened too. It felt like we couldn't catch a break.

When George left on Christmas Eve, his journey was terrible. At the border he had a scary incident with the police. He went to a Forex bureau to exchange some US Dollars for Kenya Shillings. The woman behind the counter, took his two bills, went away and then gave them back to him, instructing him to go to the next counter. When he did, the woman there told him one of his bills was fake and called the police. They said he would be prosecuted for money laundering. After a few hours, they said they would let him go only if he agreed to leave the money behind. Basically we believe the lady at Forex and police man were setting people up, knowing the innocent victims could do nothing about it and keeping the money for themselves. At last when he was on the road again, he got stuck in a three hour traffic jam outside Nairobi.

Later he had another incident with police. The police in Kenya are known for corruption. There are many police on the roads flagging down cars with the purpose of collecting bribes. On our last trip from Kisumu to Moshi, we were stopped 9 times by the police. Fortunately, all our paperwork was in line so we never had any problems. Although they tried! They really scrutinized our papers looking for something to find on us. This time, a cop had a problem with George's border docs for the car and said he would be investigated for car theft. Once again, after a while, George was let go.

A normal drive from Moshi to Kisumu takes 12 hours. This took him 18. It was horrible and stressful. Little did either of us know, the situation was about to get worse.

Stay tuned for Part 2... The Water Breaks and this whole nightmare begins.