I can’t believe it’s
already been three and a half months, but I’m finally sharing my birth
story. It will be ridiculously long…just
so you know.
Months before my due date, I had a “feeling” about October
17th. Such a strong feeling,
in fact, that I even told my husband about it.
“This is probably silly,” I said, “but I just feel good about October 17th
for the baby to come. We’ll get there, and it will come and go and have meant
nothing. But, you know, maybe.”
The week of my due date, my mom decided to come over to
visit. She lives about a four-hour drive
away. “If you haven’t had the baby by
Wednesday,” she said, “I’ll take Little Spaghetti, and we can go back home and
give you guys a day to yourselves.” My
heart dropped. That meant he’d be gone
Thursday. October 17th. What if the baby really did come that
day? He’d miss it.
Wait a minute. He’d miss it? Miss what? Watching me be in
labor? On second thought, that sounded
like a perfect idea.
But what if I didn’t spend my last day as a mom of one with
him? Well, I’d had three and a half years for it to be just me and him. If I hadn’t made the best of my time with
him, one more day wasn’t going to change anything.
Monday morning – the day my mom was to arrive – about 2
a.m., I started having contractions. I’d
been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks, but these were definitely
different. They came every 8-10 minutes,
and after about 2 hours, they were more like every 5-7 minutes. “This is it!” I thought. “Today is going to
be the day.”
And then they stopped.
Later that day, I went to the OB for my 40-week
check-up. He said my cervix looked the
same as it had for weeks. He stripped my
membranes and sent me on my way. That
afternoon, my mom and I made "Put You Into Labor Eggplant Parmesan." I’m not sure if eating this lasagna could put you into labor,
but I think making it sure could.
Tuesday morning, about 3 a.m., the contractions started up
again. Every 5-7 minutes. “The lasagna worked! This is going to happen
for sure now,” I thought. Three hours
later, when my husband got up for work, I told him I thought it might really be
happening.
And then they stopped.
I tried to keep busy.
I googled “labor starting and stopping?” and ”does labor stop?” and
“contractions start and stop, when will I have this baby.” Everything I read told me I was having “false
labor.” Let me tell you, folks, that may
be what they call it, but this labor was anything but false.
Wednesday morning, can you guess what happened? Boom,
contractions, every 5 minutes starting at around 3 a.m. And then, after a few hours, they
stopped. I was getting really
discouraged by this point.
“Why can’t I
just go into labor???” All this false
labor bullshit sucked. I tried to tell myself
that the contractions had to be doing
something. I whined to the Blogger Idol
contestants group (who happened to be having a contest to see who could guess
when I’d actually have this baby). A
couple of women there were very reassuring. “I had labor on and off for days,
but then when it really happened, it went so fast. Until then, it was horrible, though. The
waiting. The starting and stopping.”
My mom took Little Spaghetti home with her later that day,
and my husband and I went out for pizza that night. If nothing else, I was going to enjoy my last
day to not haul any kids around.
Thursday morning, about 4 a.m., the contractions came
back. This was old news by this point,
so I tried to go back to sleep. My
husband woke up with his alarm clock and told me he was going to stay home from
work because he was getting a cold. We
both went back to bed, and I think I dozed on and off.
A few hours later, the contractions weren’t stopping, and it
was getting harder and harder to lie down through them. I got up to move and walk. Or sit on the yoga ball. Or something. Some positions helped the pain; others made
it much worse. I’d get myself in a
position and be afraid to move in case I got caught somewhere that made me much
more uncomfortable. When I did, I’d just
buckle down and breathe through my contraction until it was over and I could
get into a position I knew would hurt less.
About 8:00 or so that morning, I decided to get in the
bathtub. That felt so much better. The contractions were still intense and still
coming every five minutes or so.
That was the strangest time, for me. I’d be in incredibly intense pain for thirty
seconds or so. Rocking in the water and
moaning through the pain. And then it
would just be gone. And I’d feel totally
normal for another four minutes or so until the pain came back. During those
in-between times, we’d laugh and joke about things. My husband had brought a laptop into the
bathroom so we could watch TV. We were
blowing through the whole season of Master
Chef Junior.
At one point, I said to him, “I think I’m in labor, but this
can’t possibly be it, right? I mean, I feel totally fine between the
contractions. It’s actually sort of
boring.”
I felt hungry after a couple hours and decided that Jello
was the only thing that sounded good.
“I’ll go get a couple boxes,” Mr. Engineer said.
“Boxes??” I said, “Who are you kidding? What are we gonna do
– boil water and wait for it to set up in the fridge? I think we’ll have a baby
before it’d be ready to eat.” Pre-made
Jello from the dairy case it was. Red
and orange. They both tasted phenomenal.
About noon, I was really starting to feel like we might want
to head to the hospital. I was getting
anxious and excited that we were finally going to meet our little girl. My mind started racing, thinking of the
things we should gather up and get in the car.
Eight hours of contractions every five minutes seemed like it had to be
going in the right direction. I decided
to get out of the tub and walk around to see if I could move things along. I texted my doula to let her know that I
thought I might be getting close, as she had a two-hour drive ahead of her to
get to me.
I went out to the living room to sit on the exercise
ball. The contractions didn’t seem to be
coming as often. I started timing them
again. 7 minutes apart. Then 8. Then 9.
And then, they stopped.
Tomorrow: birth story,
part 2!
Argh! You are the Queen of the Cliffhanger! ;-)
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