i got up to pee for about the 5th time that night. it was 3 am. when i laid back down i noticed i felt crampy. i tossed & turned for about 10 minutes and noticed i felt crampy again. i glanced at the clock. tossed & turned for another 10 minutes. crampy. glanced at the clock & grabbed my phone. i had an appointment with my midwife at 8:30 am and i thought i'd have to tell her about these early contractions. so i started keeping track. this went on for about 2 hours and i finally started to drift off to sleep between the contractions, which were still about 10 min apart. i figured they'd stop eventually. after all i was only 36 weeks. that day i became a mother. that day my life changed in ways i never expected.
my water broke around 6 am [thankfully it was just a trickle]. up to this point i had been in denial that i was in labor. the whole water breaking thing turned the denial into shock. this led to me running in and giving my sweet sleeping hubs a rather shocking wake up call (sorry friendo)... at least I let him sleep from 3am-6am while i pretended i wasn't in labor... at this point I literally had no idea what to do. apparently they go over this part at your 36 week appointment, which was scheduled for 8:30 am. eventually i was able to get ahold of my midwife and moved my appointment to 7am. when we got to the office my midwife confirmed my water broke and that i was having a baby that day. she suggested we go out for breakfast or go for a walk. when we got in the car i let j know we were going straight home to clean! i still could not believe my baby was coming NOW. we had no crib. my hospital bag wasn't packed. the house was a disaster. the nursery wasn't finished. my showers were scheduled for that weekend. and on & on. we were so. not. ready. for the next couple hours we worked on getting things in order and the contractions intensified. i frantically finished packing the hospital bag, which thankfully i had started and i had a full list on my phone. i was very happy to have the list as i would have pretty much forgotten everything in my current frazzled state. my first hard contraction sent me running to the toilet. throwing up and contracting at the same time is no fun, i don't recommend it. that was the first time i told j, maybe we should go to the hospital now. my bradley trained birthing coach looked at me and gently said, why don't we do a couple more contractions here. so i labored on. as a strong contraction came on my sweet hubs came to massage me, one of the relaxation techniques we had learned in our birthing class. i ordered him not to touch me. poor guy just had to throw weeks of training out the window. te hee (i'll gladly take those massages now, love!) he was absolutely amazing and i was so glad to have him by my side. i no longer could find any comfortable position with my contractions, so i decided to try the bathtub. i found myself loudly moaning through the hard contractions, my midwife called it my birthsong. the bathtub offered little relief as it is not a soaking tub and my big ole belly was not even under water. as i started thinking about the process that would need to ensue to get from my house to the hospital bed, i looked at j and said we need to go to the hospital now. he called our midwife to let her know we were on the way. i had a contraction in the car as i waiting for j, i wondered if the neighbor could hear me moaning my way through the contraction. i had 2 contractions on our 5 minute drive to the hospital. i had a contraction as j was signing us into the hospital and they asked if i wanted a wheelchair. i declined and they sent us right up to our room that they had ready and waiting [i was very appreciative of how quickly this went and how ready they were for us.] my midwife arrived soon after and checked me. she announced i was almost 7 cm dilated. this was extremely encouraging to hear! however, as a few more contractions came and went i wondered how much longer i could endure. the contractions were so intense i was finding it difficult to breath and was actually losing my voice from all the moaning, er my birth song. i was beginning to feel a small urge to push and i asked my midwife if it would get stronger or if i should just push. she said i would know when i was ready to push. with my next contraction i realized my body was ready to push and my mind totally was not. with my next contraction, i let out a grunt so now everyone in the room knew i was ready to push. i consider myself to be a pretty tough cookie. but with the amount of pressure & stretching that was going on, the thought of pushing terrified me. my midwife told me to push with my next contraction. the first couple pushes were a bit reserved. my midwife told me to get mad and push and that's exactly what it took. i thought rational thoughts along the lines of, well i hope she's happy when i break in half. needless to say i didn't break in half...i did have some serious tearing, but that's because fabs came flying out. my little lady arrived at 1:29pm, after about thirty minutes of pushing, and less than two hours after we arrived at the hospital. little did i know this would be the easy part of my day. my midwife lay my tiny squirming baby on my stomach. and i knew. the instant i saw her, i knew...
(to be continued...)
