Remember a few weeks ago when I said that "Operation Eviction" was going into effect at 37 weeks? Well, I had long forgotten about that little plan and honestly was feeling a tad apprehensive about the whole "labor, pain, and responsibility for another human life" thing. The weekend before G's arrival D and I had a nice little movie date on Friday night and decided that we would use Saturday to run some errands and go out to a nice lunch. I may or may not have been nagging that we would only have so many weekends to spend by ourselves...little did we know, it would definitely be our last!
On Saturday, at approximately 37 weeks, my dumb ass did all of the things on my Operation Eviction list without even realizing it. I walked. I ate some labor inducing food. I walked some more, went to the gym, and lucky for the hubby, even engaged in a little sexy time. We went to bed Saturday night and I was awoken around 4:30am on Sunday morning with some cramp-like pain. When I went to the bathroom I noticed I had some bleeding and just decided I could attribute it to Saturday nights festivities. Still, I did what any neurotic first time mom would do and called both my mom and the Labor & Delivery floor at the hospital to make sure everything was normal. I was assured that the bleeding was nothing to worry about from the hospital and my mom promised to check in with me through out the day. She immediately suspected that things could be a sign of early labor, but I totally thought that there was no way being that 37 weeks, 1 day was just WAY too early for that sort of thing to happen.
I don't think I ever went back to sleep that morning. Instead I lounged, went to the bathroom obsessively to check on things, and googled things like "signs you are in labor". Very healthy.
All day I timed things on and off. They would get closer together, further apart, and then sometimes even stop completely. When my mom got off of work, she started looking at flights and found one that would get her to Louisiana around 10:30am...we just had to make up our minds by 11pm that evening. Fast forward to Sunday night. Contractions stopped completely around 7pm and I told her to not worry about changing her flights. No big deal...it just looked like things were not progressing. I went to bed around 8:30pm, and part of me was relieved, but another part was kind of disappointed that this wasn't the real thing. I had gotten more and more excited about the prospect of meeting our baby girl throughout the day. Luckily I didn't have to wait much longer. I woke up again at 10:30pm with raging contractions that could be easily timed. Molly and I sat up watching Kendra's E True Hollywood Story and kept a log of how far apart things were until about 1am. Then we woke up D and he sat with us and timed things for a little longer. Finally, we decided that we better make our way to the hospital, so at about 2:30am I called my mom, let her know we were going in, and headed out.
Once in Labor and Delivery I was checked to see how much progress we had made and hooked up to a machine to monitor contractions and that babies heart rate for an hour. At the time I was only 2cm dilated (bummer!) and barely effaced. At the end of the hour they checked again and really the only thing that had changed was that things were softening up, so I was about 50% effaced at the time. They sent us home with some Ambien, said to try and get some sleep, and if this was early labor, things would progress while I rested. Unfortunately, sleep never happened and things just continued to intensify. We held out until about 8am, got to shower and make sure everything was in order and then headed right on back to the hospital. This time there was a new staff on duty and the nurse that was monitoring me was awesome. I was almost a 3, but she said that at the end of the hour if I was still close she would try to "stretch" things when she checked me and see if they would admit me even though I was under 4cm. Basically that is exactly the course of action that was taken...and thank goodness, because not 10 minutes after I was in a room and getting hooked up to a monitor my water broke. (Or in my words..."I either peed myself, or my water broke!")
It was officially the real deal!
Rough...about to start pushing.
After my water broke contractions continued to intensify, quickly. Because they were already coming at 1 to 3 minutes apart, with no indication of slowing down, we decided to go ahead and get an epidural after my lab work came back. I had planned on waiting until I was more dilated, but honestly, I figured that if I was going to get it either way, why wait? Plus, I didn't really care if it slowed things down because by this time my mom had found another flight that would get her in around 9 pm and I wasn't in a rush.
Let me tell you something about epidurals: They. Are. Amazing.
I seriously don't know why anyone would opt out on the option. I mean, come on people, this is 2010. We have modern medicine that is literally here to help us...and I decided that my baby would much rather meet a happy mommy than one that was in agony all day and totally exhausted. I completely understand that people have their personal feelings about the whole thing, but in my experience it made for a great day and a happy labor.
I was happy enough that I sent D home to take care of the dog, give our keys to the neighbors, and rent a bunch of movies for us to watch while we were in wait mode. We had a really fun day (at least that is how I remember it now...), relaxing, talking, and getting pumped up for the big event! He was an awesome person to have around. I got trashy gossip mags picked up for me and he dealt with phone calls and letting our family in on what was going on. Things progressed very slowly. We were originally told that our baby would be here around dinner time...but as we approached 7pm and I was still only about a 6, it was clear that we had a few more hours to wait. It took me awhile to get to 4cm, but once I was there, I would say I progressed about a centimeter an hour. Meanwhile, my mom landed around 8:45pm, got on the road from the airport and headed to the hospital. At about 9:30 when the nurse came into check me we were told that I was ready to go! Since I didn't feel an urge to push, we decided to let the baby labor down some on her own and start pushing when my mom arrived. She made her way in to the hospital about 10:15 and things started getting set up for push time! I was so happy to have her there...and who would have thought that she could make it in time with the huge change in schedule!? On Monday evening, as we prepared to start pushing the baby was a gestational age of 37 weeks, 2 days. How's that for an effective eviction plan?
xo,
H
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