Background information

Originally posted on April 15th 2010

I would like to share how I met my husband, 

Like nearly every single one of my friends I have to date, I met Emmanuel online. He contacted me first - I was in a relationship at the time, so I wasn’t even looking to date or anything. But soon that relationship went sour, and Emmanuel and I got closer. I don’t recall exactly when we started chatting, but I know it was before my 22nd birthday(October 2007). Only 3 short months later, and I decided to take the 9 hour bus ride to Sarnia, ON and meet him. By this point we knew we loved one another, and after meeting in person he was my boyfriend. Going home was hard, and I cried because I knew that realistically once of us would have to move if we were to last.

Right before I went to visit him, I had gotten fired from my job at a high end salon that I loved working at. I went home to a ‘fast food’ salon job, and pretty much hated my life. I took a huge pay cut, and was already living in an apartment that was very expensive for one person($700), and now I had to change my way of life emensely because I had become accustom to spending ever cent and had nothing saved. One day while talking on the phone with Emmanuel he said that I should just move there, and I did. 

My least was up at the end of February if I’m not mistaken, so only 3 months after actually meeting, I packed up all my belongings, and said goodbye to all my friends and family. At first we lived with his roommate, but the apartment was in bad shape, and it was weird living in someone else’s place, where I had nothing of my own really. But then his mother was moving and all of my stuff was in her basement, so we decided rather than pay for storage, we’d find a place of our own.

Well that was a feat in itself.

We couldn’t find anything available in our price range, or that we liked, and then the one we found and loved(huge loft, very bright, and pretty spacious) we weren’t accepted as tenants because I only lived in one apartment prior, and they wanted as least two. We had about two or three weeks left till our move out date, and I finally saw a sign for an apartment on the same street we lived on, downtown above some businesses. I called, we viewed, and it was amazing. A loft, with half walls for the bedroom, large walk in closet… Well then one week before we were to move in, and we get a call from the landlord saying her husband had rented the unit out to someone else, and already cashed their cheque. With a little pressure from Emmanuel’s mother, we ended up with another unit in the same building. It was even better than the one we saw, nearly double the size, and only $50 more. We got really lucky.

On our 6 month anniversary, Emmanuel proposed to me.

Soon afterwards we decided to start trying to conceive. We really didn’t want to wait to start our family, and within a month we had a positive pregnancy test result. I guess we really didn’t think about everything that goes into a pregnancy, because neither of us had a family doctor in Sarnia, so I had to go to a walk in clinic to get referred to an obstetrician. Because I had no idea who any of the doctors were here, the only request I had was that my doctor was female. 

We were given a referral for Dr. Saraf, and though some people really like her, we didn’t feel comfortable with her at all. I think she just assumed I was a teen girl who got knocked up by my boyfriend, and she was very cold, and rude I found. At one point she actually told me I was morbidly obese and would likely die giving birth. Not what you want to here as a human, let alone a hormonal pregnant woman. We hadn’t liked her up to that point already, but that was the last straw, and we got a referral to Dr. Rutledge. 

Now I don’t know if she just had a lot of pregnancies at the time, but we had to wait till I was around 20 weeks to finally even meet her, and start being under her care. During that time, I had some spotting, and Dr. Saraf said that I could miscarry, but not to plan that I was going to, but not to go home thinking everything was ok either(almost in that exact, blunt and poor bedside manner type of way) and ordered an emergency ultrasound(our first as we didn’t want to have any testing done on our fetus, and so she never ordered one to be done), the next day. Everything was fine, we got to hear her heartbeat, and got our first photos of her. I believe we were 14 weeks along at that point.

Just before Christmas 2008, we headed to Kitchener to have one of those 3D ultrasounds done, because at our second ultrasound, they were unable to determine the sex(I blame it on the tech doing that last, after she had poked at her for an hour, of course she didn’t want to show her goods!), and we really wanted to know/tell people for Christmas. That was pricey, but really cool. We went all out and got photos, a dvd, and even a teddy bear with her heartbeat. We finally knew we were having a girl, and were able to start really preparing for her arrival.

At some point soon after Christmas, I said to Emmanuel that we should get married before she is born. We both have old fashion grandparents who are very religious, and the whole ‘child born out of wedlock’ issue was brought up. 2009 just so happened to have two Friday the 13ths, and we intended to be wed on the one in February, but I believe something came up with our pastor or I didn’t get the licence in time, and we ended up having to postpone. On February 27th, we were squeezed in between someone’s wedding(as the pastor forgot to book us in! haha), we sat in our living room - his mother and a friend from the church as our witnesses. We had no rings to exchange as it was last minute and all, so we exchanged high fives. His mother stopped me while beginning to say my vows, to make sure I wanted to marry her son! Oh and our cat was in heat, and our other cat was humping her. Memorable wedding? I think so!

A little over a month after getting married, our baby was set to be due on April 1st. She like most first children, was not on time unfortunately. I was doing stairs practically every day for a week before, and a week after her due date, trying to get something to happen. I wasn’t dilated at all on my due date, and my check up the following week I was only at a half cm if I recall correctly. We opted to be induced at that point. Looking back I really wish we hadn’t, but at the time here were the circumstances - it was days before Easter and my doctor was to be on Holidays till the following Tuesday, at which point would have made me 2weeks over due, and I would have had to have been induced anyways. Also, my aunt was driving down from Ottawa to come visit, and meet the baby, so she kind of needed to be out of me. Being that Dr. Rutledge would be on holidays, another doctor would deliver our baby had I gone into labour. Doctor on call? Dr. Saraf. Needless to say, we opted for the induction even though Dr. Rutledge wanted her to come on her own. Induction began at 6:45am, and at 9:44pm Pinxit Leigh Lynn Trouble White was born, weighing in at 7lbs 9oz, and 21 1/2” long. I will post my birth story separately, as I feel it deserves its own recognition.