There are some things in life you take for granted…
Every day you expect that you will wake up on time. Every day you expect that your car will start. Every day you expect that your power will be on.
And every day you expect for your toilet to work properly.
That is where my story begins.
I was 35 weeks pregnant. Not feeling great – just pushing through to the end of the pregnancy. I was done with nesting. My nursery was decorated and ready for a new baby girl. My birth kit was ordered and put together. My house was neat and clean…. Then it happened.
I am a planner at heart – I am the COMPLETE opposite of a procrastinator. I like to be finished with projects well before their “due date.”
The story continues…
So it was Friday, May 3rd. Adam got home from work around 5, just like normal. We like to go walking in our neighborhood in the evenings as a family. As Adam was loading up the car with the stroller and putting Aidalyn in her seat, I ran upstairs to use the potty one last time before heading out the door (being 35 weeks pregnant… I always had to go to the potty). Because I knew they were already in the car and loaded up, I rushed to get downstairs…
We had a great walk along the reservoir. It was a beautiful day. 45 minutes later we went home planning to cook dinner.
As soon as I opened the kitchen door, I heard it.
All I heard was loud rushing water. So I yelled out “Adam!!!”
I ran inside to try to find where it was coming from. It was so loud I thought it had to be right in the kitchen…. nope. I ran further into my house and was met with standing water in my living room, dining room, downstairs hallway. Water was running over our balcony, through the ceiling and light fixtures. Water was everywhere!
I ran upstairs and found standing water in our bedroom carpet – tons of water… everywhere!
Finally found the source: the upstairs toilet!
It had been running the whole time we were gone! and supposedly has very very high water pressure.
Aidalyn was crying “It’s raining, It’s raining!” as we sat on the steps and Adam started to process our game plan.
We decided for me to take Aidalyn to a friend’s house and for Adam to call an emergency water damage company to come. It was about 7 now and they couldn’t be there until 9. Adam also called about 9 guys from our church to come and help.
The guys were able to move all our furniture out of the way downstairs and upstairs – from our living room, dining room, bedroom, closet, and bathroom.
I was in shock basically. Unable to sleep that night. Adam and our friend got to their house around 2 or later in the morning Saturday.
The repair company put in fans and dehumidifiers throughout the house and we had to leave the house for at least a week. We were so very grateful to be able to stay at our friend’s house for 4 nights while our insurance company found some place for us to stay.
We learned we were going to have to replace about 1/2 our downstairs wood floor, then sand and stain all of the downstairs wood floor, replace the floor in our bedroom, and repaint the entire downstairs and our bedroom.
Meanwhile, all the furniture from our bedroom was moved into my beautiful nursery…. My heart is broken. All that work I spent on preparing the house to bring my baby into was meaningless.
I am already tired, and all I see is more and more work ahead of me.
This was going to take a while.
At church Sunday, I think I was still in shock over everything. Here I am about to bust… and my house is unable to be lived in and everything is out of place. Talk about added stress at the end of a pregnancy… and I was planning a home birth. I cried through one of the songs as the band played “Always.” It was kind of my pregnancy anthem this time around. I took it as a little message from God that he was going to take care of us and everything was going to be okay.
By Wednesday we get the word that we can be moved into the Residence Inn in Richmond. It is located in the city about 30 minutes from our house. It wasn’t ideal by any means. We had some issues with it not having doors or closed space for Aidalyn to have a separate area for naps and sleeping, there was an ant issue, and it was just small… Again I was planning a “home” birth without a home. I really didn’t want to have a baby in a hotel (even though my midwife assured me that she could deliver a baby anywhere).
On the plus side, we had free hot breakfast every day and I didn’t have to clean or make my bed for a month. We.stayed.in.a.hotel.for.a.month!!!!
Meanwhile my mom came to stay with us to help with Aidalyn. She slept on the couch in the hotel for a week!
Finally, finally, finally. Our insurance guy got the word on how much repair was needed on our house and how long it was going to take. He also knew that I was planning a home birth and was trying to be accommodating. He found us a rental house that primarily rents to water and fire damage families.
This house was PERFECT!! I cannot say enough about how incredible it was for us to move out of the hotel and into the house. I was getting pretty depressed in the hotel. The house was so cute and in a great neighborhood with a playground. It was about the size of our house and had a fenced in back yard. This was going to be perfect for my home birth! And the owner was totally okay with us using it.
We were there exactly one week before I went into labor. I stayed there until Annaleigh was 3 weeks old, then my mom drove me and the girls to Louisiana to meet the rest of the family and Adam stayed to get our house finished.
Adam moved back into our house July 9th.
I came home from Louisiana July 23rd to my new beautiful house and brought my 5.5 week old home for the first time. 
No matter how much you plan on things working the way you expect them to, life is always a ride. I am so thankful for our friends and family. We would have been lost without them.
