Emily Waldorf left Arkansas at 10:30 p.m. Lying in the back of the ambulance, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing something wrong.
She dozed in and out of sleep on a stretcher. A paramedic watched over her while knitting a blue baby blanket. After nearly four hours, Waldorf, then 17-weeks pregnant, woke up to the bumps on State Line Road at 2 a.m. She had finally made it across the border to Kansas City.
She was transferred into a hospital room and remembers women with surgical bonnets and green scrubs walking in. She recalls they said: "We’ve been waiting on you. We’re so glad you made it."
“It just felt like, ‘Oh my God. You’re going to help me,’” Waldorf says. “It felt very much like crossing over a freedom line.”
Five days prior, Waldorf had been diagnosed with cervical insufficiency and the preterm premature rupture of membranes “PPROM,” which is when the amniotic sac ("water") breaks before 37 weeks of pregnancy. The risk of disease, sepsis or death increases significantly in women with PPROM. She was told she would miscarry soon.
