Friday, June 8th, 2001: The day that has come to be known as "The Great Flood of 2001" hit Houston. The summer was just beginning to get hot, and I was rather liking the rain, though I was a bit surprised that it didn't seem to have anywhere to go. After a good hard rain in Houston the amount of standing water everywhere is amazing. Marius was in Toronto on a business trip for the whole week, and I had expected him home that night. But tropical storm Allison had other ideas. Flights were being rerouted through New Orleans due to the inclement weather, and Marius phoned me late in the afternoon to let me know he'd be coming in late. And when it was late, he phoned me to say he couldn't leave the airport - water everywhere, on the roads, in the parking garage. He would try to find a hotel room (though on the news they already announced that there was no longer anything available) and come home in the morning. Even later he phoned to confirm that fact, and said he'd just hang out in the airport. After hanging up I took note of the latest news: Water up to the 5 foot mark at the I-45 FM 1960 interchange. Hmmm, interesting, that's about 20 minutes from here. Nearby Cypress Creek was flooding in places. I jokingly thought to myself that I'd be waking up with water under the bed. I went to sleep wondering what would happen next. It was 3 weeks from Kai's due date.
I woke up at around 5:45am needing to pee - something very pregnant women need to do quite frequently. My feet hit the floor and I felt liquid trickling down my leg. Hmmm, I don't have an incontinence problem, I thought. Oh my. A few steps and I had my own little flood happening. The brain thought "but I have 3 more weeks, this is too early". The brain puts together bizarre plans of action when confronted with odd situations. I mopped up the floor so I wouldn't slip on it and hurt the baby. Then I remembered the weather. It had stopped raining, and I remembered that my neighbor was a doctor (but her specialty is physical therapy), and that I had to phone the hospital to let them know I was on my way, and oh yes, I had to phone Marius as well. Lucky for me I'd put together my hospital bag only the day before "just in case". No one answered at the hospital, kept getting various answering machines when I tried different numbers in the women's medical center. Hmmm. I phoned emergency - they also didn't know what was happening in the women's center, but told me I had to get there ASAP. Grabbing my stuff I went out the door and was a bit surprised to find water up to the hubcaps of the cars - not too much. Just think of it as a large puddle, I thought. I gotta get to the hospital. The car started and I drove through the water - about 50 yards. Turning the corner brought me into deeper water - funny I hadn't considered that possibility. The car stalled, and then died.
A woman was wading around checking out the extent of the newly created beachfront. We went up to her apartment and dialed 911 for about 20 minutes before getting through. It was only then that I realized we were experiencing a natural disaster. The dispatcher phoned back to tell me the ambulance couldn't make it to my front door so could I make it out to the road and look for it? I waded out to the main road and was shocked at the water level - an emergency off-road vehicle came snorting out of the water up unto a piece of higher ground. It had one of those air intake pipes well above its roof. They told me that my husband was waiting by the ambulance. How could that be? With all the high water how could Marius have driven out here from the airport? But he was there when we pulled up out of the water, which was almost up to the windows most of the way. It turns out he'd wisely decided to take the back roads from the airport and managed to avoid all the water on the freeways. They said they couldn't take me to the hospital I was supposed to go to - too much water, so they'd take me to a closer one that had just been built this year.
When we arrived, I received a complimentary tour of the entire hospital as the ambulance staff were in search of the maternity center (they'd never been to this hospital before). After 20 minutes of this they finally found their way out of the maze of unfinished rooms and wheeled me into a shiny new delivery room. The hospital staff was punchy - no shift changes since the rain started. I started feeling my contractions. Someone rolled in an ultrasound machine and we discovered that Kai was all the wrong way - butt down with her ankles up around her ears and no where near ready to come out. In that position turning her wasn't an option, so the verdict was that it was C-section time.
After waiting over an hour to go into the OR (someone else was delivering ahead of me) they stuck me in the spine about 3 times before finally finding a space between the vertebrae for the spinal block. Marius finally strolled in wearing his hospital scrubs. He held my hand and told me what they were doing - having a blue sheet in front of my face was rather irritating, but I suppose watching yourself being operated on would be more so. The drug took longer than usual to take affect, and they kept poking me and pinching me to make sure I didn't feel anything. When they finally started I felt like they were all in there up to their elbows pulling things around. The sensation was odd, to say the least - I felt like they were in up to there elbows grabbing things and yanking them around inside me - it actually tickled and I started laughing at one point. When I finally heard Kai screaming I was relieved. She came out backwards, but with no problems, and she was all there. "Are you going to call her Allison?" asked the anesthesiologist. "No way - Kai Alexandra. We planned to name her that a while ago, though we certainly didn't plan this rather adventurous arrival.