Our Birth Story

I suspected we were going to have an early baby as early as Tuesday the 9th.  I was having an off day.  I was starting to get more Braxton Hicks contractions (also known as practice contractions) daily, particularly when exerting myself. And in the next few days would get more and more in the evenings.

Monday the 15th I had an appointment with my Doula, Doris Ann, and while we were together I asked her about the BH contraction I was feeling.  There was no pain, but there was a definite tightening of my uterus as my stomach would get rock hard.  She observed me during our visit and noted they were about twelve minutes apart and she could see them causing me to flush, a result of hormone shifts.  It was looking like prelabor.

Tuesday they were again milder in the morning but by the evening were about 9-10 min apart.

Wednesday evening they were about 6-7 min apart and getting kind of crampy. Wednesday night was a very rough night sleep.  I thought perhaps once I got up I might have to call my friend Amy and my Doula but things subsided once again.

Thursday morning I had a doctor's appointment.  I left Lily at Amy's and headed in to see what they could tell me.  I was 3cm dilated, 60% effaced and the baby was at a -2 station.  Since I had been prelaboring for a few days already - and getting tired of it - I made the decision to ask them to strip my membranes.  Which I was promptly told there wasn't much left of to strip.  So I called Doris Ann to update her and went to pick up Lily thinking I'd bring her home and we'd take a nap, rest up and see what happened next.  But I couldn't sleep through the cramps that kicked in with the contractions that were now 5-6 minutes apart, so I got up.

At 12:30 I was feeling a little sick to my stomach so I called Amy to come over, I didn't want to be alone any more. And by the time she got over my contractions were about three minutes apart.

At 2:30 my friend Ruth came over to pick up Lily.  Oh.My.Goodness! I did not anticipate the angst that would come with letting my big girl leave! But she told me, "Mama, stay here..." with her little hand up as a stop sign when I tried to walk her out the door. And I knew she'd be well cared for.

At 4:25 I threw up and it sank in that I was really in labor.  We called Doris Ann to come over and she arrived just after 5:00.  She said, "What do you say we have this baby by 8:00?" and Amy and I both looked at her like she had two heads.  My contractions were coming every 2-5 minutes, very erratic, and about a minute long at this point.  But we started walking around the circle of my living room, dining room and kitchen, pausing to squat with each contraction.

WARNING: This paragraph may be TMI.  By 6:30 my water still hadn't broken so I headed to the bathroom to see if I could feel my cervix and see how dilated I might be.  All I could feel was the bulging bag of water... and I mean bulging! It was beginning to pass through  my cervix, so I had no clue how dilated I might be.  And suddenly I was feeling a slight urge to push.

So at 6:45 my water still hadn't broken and I was feeling the urge to push with my contractions.  We'd been monitoring my temp and BP the whole labor and at this point I was reading 99.1 degrees. Coupled with my urge to push, come 7:00 we decided to head for the hospital to see what a cervical check would reveal.

Now, I live three blocks from the hospital... the longest ride ever!... but the girls parked me on the far side from L&D and walked me up to the third floor hoping to break my water.  So by the time we actually got there it was 7:38 and I was so ready to push.

We we're second in line to be checked in behind a woman in a wheel chair, moaning quietly.  By this time I was having contractions every minute or two and all it took was two contractions in the hallway to have them rushing me into a room to be checked.  At 7:43 I was 100% effaced and dilated to 8cm with a bulging bag of water.  They offered to me that they could break my water and I could have my baby and I said yes!  (The poor woman in the hallway got sent home because she wasn't dilated enough.)

As soon as they broke my water I was dilated to 10cm and we got down to business.  They didn't even bother to put my IV in until after I had delivered.  I started pushing at 7:55 and David arrived at 8:08!  He was crying before his shoulders were free.  There was a little meconium in the amniotic fluid, which they suspected happened on my long walk up, so they couldn't give David to me right away, but I had him to breast at 8:32 and he latched like a pro.  His Apgar scores were 9 and 9, I couldn't ask for much more.

I was monitored every hour for the next six hours to watch for the high blood pressure indicator of HELLP syndrome, but everything looked fine.  I was able to eat and urinate, both of which I could not do after birthing Lily, so I was feeling pretty confident that I was going to be okay. And we were discharged home the following evening. Whew!