Seth’s Birth – Not quite what we had planned – Part One

Well I thought I better start writing this before I forget everything that happened – and while the awesome nurses in the NICU are still attending to my newborn’s every need. I am already forgetting some of the details, but I’ll do my best.

I guess where I left off with the pre-labor part of the story was when I tried to take a nap after my doctor’s appointment, so I’ll start there. By that time I was starting to feel really crampy again, similar to how things were after my appointment last Monday when Dr. H had stripped my membranes. Except this time I was also definitely having some contractions as well and it was getting a little hard to distinguish one from the other. I lay down in bed to see if I could sleep but basically I was in *some* kind of pain almost constantly so sleeping was not really an option. Around 2:30pm I had Eric come in and help me time what I thought were the contractions and from his notes it looks like they were about every 6 minutes anywhere from 25-60 seconds long. It’s hard to describe what I was feeling, but the every 6 minute stat was not counting a lot of in stuff in between where I was feeling pain but just thinking to myself hmm, is that one or is it just a cramp or?? I was also feeling a ton of pressure and pinching any time I stood up, and any time the baby moved it was pretty painful as well. It was really confusing because a lot of what I was experiencing, I had felt before – either over the prior 3 days or on Monday last week and it had led to nothing. Anyway… a lot of the pain was in my lower back so I had Eric rubbing it and at least initially it felt really good for him to push really hard with his fists and stroke upwards. He tried rolling with the tennis ball too, but that didn’t work as well – it was a little too small, and not warm like his hands were. I guess a little before 3pm I thought maybe I would call my doctor’s office and just talk through what was going on with the triage nurse and see what they wanted me to do. The nurse called me back around 3:30pm and I explained that I just couldn’t tell a lot of the time if I was just feeling cramps from Dr. H stripping my membranes or if I was possibly in labor. She said the only way to tell was to go down to the hospital and get hooked up to the monitors. She said if they aren’t contractions they’ll just send me back home but that it was no big deal. I felt that she made a point to ensure that I shouldn’t feel silly for going in just to check, which was nice because all along I had been worried about going to the hospital too soon and having it be a false alarm. Anyway, it worked and so we got into gear.

I hadn’t had a shower yet that day so I got cleaned up, we packed the car and headed to labor & delivery. On the way to the hospital I was loosely keeping track of contractions and they seemed to be around 3 minutes apart the whole way. Luckily we live only about 15 minutes away. Oh, and wow everyone was right about riding in the car during labor – not fun. And Eric thought he would do me a favor and take the freeway because he thought it would be less bumpy – it wasn’t. That route took us through downtown which is a lot of one way streets, which seemed to me like a lot of turns, and my belly rolling from side to side was horrible. I told Eric that if this was a trial run we’d need to go across the South Hill next time. Anyway, we probably got to the hospital around 4:30pm. I was a little surprised at how nonchalant the girl at the reception desk was – it seemed like 5 minutes before she got done fiddling around with some paperwork she was dealing with and acknowledged our presence. But from that point on, almost every single hospital staff person we encountered was awesome. I got hooked up to the monitors pretty quickly and discovered I was indeed having contractions, every minute! They did slow down to about 4 minutes apart though by the time they got done running the strip they needed. They checked my cervix and I was still about 3cm which was really no change from my appt that morning. The nurse called it a “loose” 3 and I remembered that in the office when Dr. H had checked me he initially said 3cm but then he was sort of talking to himself as he wrote it down in my chart and I heard him say 3-4cm. So they told us to do some laps for an hour and meet the nurse back in the triage room at 6pm. We got started and it was getting pretty difficult to walk at all by then, let alone during the contractions. After awhile I asked Eric keep track of the time between my stops to lean against the wall or sit down on whatever happened to be close by, and by the end of the hour it was roughly about every 2 minutes. I got checked again around 6:15pm and was still just around 4-4.5cm, so they hooked me back up to the monitors and called the doctor on call to see what he wanted us to do. He said I was kind of on the fence, so I should walk around for another hour and see what happened. They just didn’t want to send me home and then have me come right back. So I got dressed at about 6:45pm and headed to the bathroom for a quick stop before we got started on our laps. As soon as the bathroom door shut I had a contraction and leaned over to brace myself on the handicap bar. I felt something like the baby kicking, a dribble, a little pop, and then SPLOOSH, I was soaked. I stood there for a second trying to come to terms with what had just happened and then I opened the door and announced to everyone in the vicinity that my water broke. The nurses took one look at me up and down and sort of laughed and said “It sure did! We’ll go get a room ready for you!” I got changed into a gown and we started calling our friends and family to spread the word.

To be continued…

In other news… I got to hold my baby tonight finally!!!! He is doing AWESOME and is out of the tent for the time being. I really need to figure out my new camera. We took a TON of pictures and almost all of them are blurry :( Oh well, I got to see the real thing in crystal clear focus!


YAY!!!