As I am writing this, my son has seemed to finally go to sleep. It is 1:00 in the morning. He has been awake since 8:30 a.m. this morning, so needless to say, I am exhausted. I have wanted to blog about my birth story for two days now, though, so I am going to attempt to start it. (This post may not be posted for another couple of days as my birth story is almost as long as my introduction post, but oh well.)
**Note: It is now Friday, October 19, and I am finally able to finish this post. Apparently when you have a newborn, you don't get to do the things you want to do right away. Who knew? ;)
On Tuesday, October 2, I had a routine doctor's appointment scheduled. Even though my due date wasn't until October 8, I wanted to have this baby as soon as possible, as any pregnant woman at 39 weeks knows. I went in to get checked and was pretty disappointed with the results. Little did I know that would be the first of many times that I would have to face the same disappointment. But I'll get to that in a minute. My check-up was good, but my son had not been moving very much. They decided to hook me up to a contraction/heartrate/fetal movement monitor so that they could double check that everything was normal. They hooked me up, and immediately my boy started kicking me, as if he was trying to kick off the monitor. I looked at the nurse and said, "I promise he wasn't moving before!" She just laughed; apparently that happens almost every time they hook someone up. She left and said she would be back in a few minutes to check on me. Not long after that, I started to feel my belly tighten like I'd never felt it do before. I had started to go into early labor and I didn't know it. I watched the contractions on the tape and saw that they were pretty regular. But small. The nurse came back in, checked the tape, and said, "Looks like you're having small contractions. That's normal." I told her I had never really felt anything like the contractions I was feeling. She didn't seem concerned, and so she reassured me, then left the room. She said she would be back in 10 minutes or so, but it seems that she forgot about me. This actually ended up being fortunate, because my contractions were getting steadily stronger and more regular. They were coming almost every 3 minutes by that point, although I wasn't experiencing any pain. I had actually been seeing my doctor's nurse practitioner, since apparently a lot of babies were being born around this time. (They called them "New Years Babies.") The woman who was running the monitor finally came back in almost 25 minutes later, apologizing profusely for forgetting to come back and unhook me. She went towards the tape, picked it up, and got a funny look on her face. She said, "Wow, these are actually pretty big! Let me go get the nurse practitioner." My mom was in the room with me, and we both looked at each other in excitement. I was thinking that this might just be the day I was going to have my baby and so did she!
The nurse practitioner came in and looked at my tape. She tore it off the machine and said, "I have to go find your doctor!" She ran off walking the halls in search of him. She never did find him because he was actually at the hospital helping someone else deliver. She asked me if I felt any pain, and when I said no, she said to just go home and wait it out and to come back when I felt any pain. She didn't think I wanted to go to the hospital at that point, and she was right.
Mom and I left and went to get lunch and walk around the Whole Foods store. I was so excited; I called my husband and my dad to let them know that it may not be long till we would have a new baby. My parents lived 20 minutes closer to the hospital than we did, so I decided that I would stay there until the baby came. I knew it couldn't be too long. My husband came over as soon as he got off work, and we all sat around just waiting. My mom and I took a nice long walk up and down the hilly parts of her neighborhood, and then we went back home to wait. When 10:00 pm rolled around, I sent my husband home to go to bed. He has a job where he drives a work truck, and he had to park it back at our house. We knew that it could be hours yet till I went into active labor, and he may have needed to go to work to wait for my call.
We all went to bed around 10:30 pm, pretty much right after my husband left. I had brought our dog over to my parents house to stay, just in case I went into labor, and I'm really glad I did. The next morning at 1:40 am, I was woken up by a really painful contraction. I felt a "pop!" way down low and felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. As soon as I was finished in the bathroom, I got up and my water broke. Since this was my first pregnancy, I was in a bit of shock. I got myself together, then went into my parents room. It was very odd to go in there and say, "Hey! Wake up! My water broke!," because sleeping over at their house by myself had made me feel almost like a child again. And here I was, their child, having my own child. It was a bit strange. The next thing I did was call my husband and text my best friend, L. My husband was groggy on the phone, but I could tell he was excited. So was my friend. I told her she didn't have to come up to the hospital with us since it was the middle of the night and she had her own children to take care of, but she wanted to come anyway. I am so grateful to her that she did. She was a lot of support that day, not just for me, but for my family as well.
While I was waiting on my husband to arrive, I showered and put on a little powder, blush, and mascara. After all, I didn't want my baby to see me looking like a hag! Oh how I didn't know what I would and wouldn't care about in the near future. My husband finally got to my parents' house, and we loaded up and drove off to the hospital. The hospitals' outside signage was horrible, and we didn't know how to get in! Gates were locked and there weren't any directions on which gate was open until we got to the last one. My husband was very irritated, and I had to calm him down. We finally found the maternity parking, got all our stuff, and walked down the breezeway to the maternity ward. Now, the breezeway ended up being about 20 miles long. Ok, I exaggerate, but seriously, it was a LONG way for a pregnant woman in labor to walk.
We got to the front desk of the hospital, and they sent me back to L&D to check in. When I got to the desk, there was a woman there who was aloof and unhelpful. I was hoping that wasn't a foreshadowing of the kind of staff that I would be encountering for my birth. (It wasn't!) We actually had a friend from church who was starting her first night shift that night, and I had jokingly commented on her Facebook status saying that we might come see her that night. And we did! I asked for her to see if she was available, and miraculously, she was! I was so excited that she was able to be our nurse!
The next thing they made me do after checking in was to go into triage so they could verify that my water had actually broken. They gave me a gown and sent me to the bathroom, and then checked me out with a weird little strip of paper. It obviously was my water that had broken, so they then put me in a wheelchair and put me in a labor room with a hot tub.
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