Seven long, draining years ago, Nancy Drew Nickerson woke out of a deep sleep.  She thought she had tinkled a bit.  It must have been her imagination because her giant granny panties were dry.  She got out of bed and sat in her favorite chair, picking up one of her many pregnancy related books.  She read for a bit and then stood up.  And that is when it happened.  Her water broke. It was a flood of unending, disappearing placental fluid, gallon upon gallon that absorbed quickly into the carpet and Lazyboy recliner. Nancy freaked. She did what any woman would do who's water broke 6 weeks early. She tiptoed past her sleeping husband, grabbed the portable phone, and called her friend.

Nancy: "BESS! MY WATER JUST BROKE!"

Bess: "What? Ned needs to get you to the hospital NOW!"

Nancy: "Ned is sleeping."

Bess: "You call to tell me your baby is on the way before you tell your husband???? Wake him up! Call your doctor! Get to the ER! This baby is going to come fast!"

Nancy hung up the phone. She glanced at Ned. He looked so peaceful.  She didn't have the heart to inform him before 7:00 a.m. that child number four was about to arrive.  She dialed her doctor instead.  She prefered to labor at home.  She had yet to complete a true natural child birth and this was her last shot. She was informed to immediately go to the hospital, DO NOT DELAY, get to the hospital ASAP. The old hospital. Not the brand new, plush, exciting, hospital of her dreams that she had been coveting having her final-attempt-at-natural -birth at. The hospital with the freshly built walls and pristine wooden floors and made-to-order restaurant-style on-demand-meals that all the cool, hip, trendy, enlightened people were giving birth within. She was told to go to the old downtown hospital. The one with cement walls and 1950s linoleum. The one with the level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Nancy was having a premature baby.

Nancy was pissed.  Tomorrow, of all the days, was the actual day that Nancy had put on her anal calendar two months ago as the day to pack her bags to be ready for the hospital.  She was simply not ready for baby number four to arrive yet.  Nancy called her father, Carson Drew who flew into a panic.  Just yesterday Nancy assured good old Hannah that she could indeed go on her trip to New York City.  Hannah was not allowed at Nancy's previous births and this made her very, very angry.  Nancy agreed to let her be present for this birth and even take photos.  Nancy thought it was quite safe and reasonable to think Hannah could travel half way across the country a month and a half before her due date.  Who knew?  Apparently that was very bad advice.  Carson set about bringing Hannah home in a 24 hour traveling ordeal from hell.

 

Nancy rallied the troops. She woke up her husband, grabbed the two older boys and the 21 month old daughter, alerted neighbors, relatives, and friends, sent up the smoke signals. 

Nancy insisted that Ned take her to the New Hospital. Ned, knowing better, delivered her frothing, dripping, gushing, screaming, contracting body downtown, where they checked in to the old hospital in a rush and flurry. A rush and flurry that came to a sudden mind numbing halt.

Nancy did not deliver her premature baby for another excruitiating, agonizing, hideously painful 26 hours later. Hannah had arrived with just hours to spare and that next morning, a tiny, teeny little bitty bundle of gooey white and red flew out of Nancy's giant stitched and restitched epiduraled hoo hoo into the arms of the mean doctor that sent her to the old hospital. The baby boy was grabbed and poked and prodded and whisked off. Nancy was left alone in a room with dead legs and a burning newly stitched-again hoo hoo. Hannah left to develop the crotch shot film. Ned went with baby boy to escort him to his new NICU home. A home filled with loud annoying nurses and buzzing and beeping machines and hospital interventions that lead baby boy to be stabbed in the head with a giant needle, pumping fluids through his tiny, unprepared body.

 

Nancy called her friend George and insisted she come immediately to the hospital to take black and white dramatic photos of baby boy with the horrific needle shoved into his brains.  Unfortunately for Nancy, George's husband had just walked out on her, leaving behind their decade marriage for a tattooed troll and George was in no mood to embrace premature life through photography.  No matter how dramatic. 

Nancy demanded to breastfeed. Everyone ignored her. "They" knew better. They filled baby boy with supplements and specialty formulas and told her to rest and not worry. But Nancy knew better. She knew baby boy belonged on her boob. The hospital set about hooking up machines that go bing and ordering expensive useless tests to determine why on earth this darling boy arrived early. The come-to-find-out unnecessary antibiotics that were forced into his body through the brain syringe ended up giving him a horrible diaper rash. That lead to a yeast infection. That lead to thrush. That Nancy herself diagnosed at 3:00 in the morning on day 12 of his NICU incarceration when a harried Nurse ignored his squirting poop and diapered over him anyway, leaving his raw, newborn skin to rot in acidic formula excrement.  Upon Nancy's insistance, an oxygen machine was ordered and his bare butt had round the clock fresh air blowing away to dry out the chaffed infected skin. The formula was stopped and he was given appropriate medication to cure him of everything they inflicted upon him.

Nancy was not fond of "standard of care" hospital initiatives. Nancy knew better. Nancy knew best. She demanded meetings with social workers, wrote angry complaint letters, whipped her boob out in front of sissy male neonatal doctors, and kangaroo cared her baby boy. It took 21 days before Nancy was able to parole baby boy from the evil NICU. It helped that Nancy moved her 21 month old in to the NICU with her and there they holed up, creating quite the scene.  They were all personally escorted from the old hospital on Thanksgiving Day, Nancy's Birthday! 

 

Later that evening, Nancy showered and gave birth to Baby Boy's twin.  It was  a 6 pound blood clot.  Ned and Nancy wondered if they should name it and apply for a social security number.  They wondered if it was legal to flush it or if they should bury it in the backyard death garden.  It was digusting.  The sound of the SPLAT on the shower floor will forever haunt Nancy way more than the trauma of her 26 hour labor and the ensuing years of Hannah's gripes about being told it was fine for her to travel.

Seven years later, on the eve of Baby Boy's Golden Birthday, Nancy asked Baby Boy "So why DID you come early?"

Baby Boy responded: "I am a superhero. I was sent from the Planet Compass Rose. My mother Rebecca had 26 children and we are all Super Heroes who have been sent to other earth's to save them. It was my time to come. I came to save the world."

Seemed reasonable thought Nancy. None of the $42,000 worth of lab charges could ever show any reason for Baby Boy's early arrival. Obviously. He was a Superhero from Compass Rose.  Nancy wondered what sort of birthing care Rebecca encountered with her 26 children.  She also wondered what sort of stitiches she had and if HER lazyboy had a "certain" smell.