The Last Walk Up the Hill

For those of you who have never been to Tenwek (most of you), let me describe the local topography. The part of Kenyan where we live is very hilly and green, a beautiful place to live. The hospital was built on the very top of one of the hills, and the missionary homes are a bit farther down the same hill. What this means is an uphill climb to work every day. This was my greatest undoing during pregnancy and what I was most happy to give up when my maternity leave started on March 1. We're not talking a small hill here. To get from our house to the hospital, I first go down a flight of stairs (our apartment is on the second floor), walk up a sidewalk to the road, walk uphill on the poorly paved road to 2 flights of stairs (the lower gate), and then walk up either a ramp and flight of stairs or 2 more flights of stairs to the room where we start morning education with the interns every day. I'm not sure of the elevation change but it's substantial. On my last day of work, Eric and I joked that the only trip left up the hill was to be the "last walk" up the hill when I headed up in labor.

March 7th was to be the day of the last walk. My contractions started in the mid afternoon on the 6th, and by that evening we knew the baby was coming sooner rather than later. Of course, Maggie had taken many hours so we were in no hurry, and I wanted to labor at home as long as possible. The power was out, a daily occurrence here, but the strange part was that instead of turning back on around 8 or even 9pm, it never came back on, so I labored my candlelight (nice ambiance, right?!). By 1am the contractions were coming every 2 minutes and pretty intense, so our OB Bryan Popp came down and checked me and we decided to head up to the hospital. It took about 15 minutes with stopping for contractions, but we made it to OB where the kind nurses opened up our OB operating room (usually just open 8-5 during the week for C/S) and voila! My own private delivery room.

Turns out the walk up the hill is good for labor, because as soon as we got it, Bryan broke my water and I started pushing. Twenty minutes later, Benjamin Kenneth Kipruto McLaughlin came into the world at 2:36am (Kipruto will be his honorary Kipsigis name, from the tribe we are working among. It means "boy born while travelling, and every male in the Kipsigis tribe has a Kip name that means something specific). He weighed 8 pounds, 5 oz (just 6 oz shy of his big sister, although he was also a week early). We are so blessed! Things could not have gone smoother. I had not one by TWO great OBs there (Bryan's wife Toanh, also an OB, came to help out as well). Our friend and fellow McCropder Alyssa came up to be our personal pediatrician. We had a quick delivery with a totally healthy little boy in a private setting (not easy in the Tenwek maternity ward). And we have a great community, too--Heather Fader watched the Popp kids so the Popps could be there, and the Cropseys watched Maggie. It takes a village to birth a baby here. :)

The other blessing is that things went so smoothly that we felt comfortable coming home within three hours after the delivery. With Maggie I could barely stand up afterwards, but praise God, I am feeling so much better this time around! Eric carried Ben and although we got some odd looks from the nurses on our way out, it was good to be home. Downhill all the way. We arrived home at 5:30 and the power was still out, so we relit the candles, fed Ben, and fell into bed. A good last walk.