Another Birth Story: Part One

In the wee small hours of the next morning, I began to feel contractions.  Nothing I hadn't felt over the past few weeks.  So, while it woke me, I thought it was just false labor and went back to sleep. 

For seven minutes.

Then, I felt another.  Stronger but, I still felt that it was just a tease.  So, again, I went back to sleep. 

I remember having a dream in which I was having regular contractions and trying to decide whether or not to call the doctor.  It was interrupted by a contraction so intense that I sat straight up and realized any contraction that I had in the past was not really a contraction at all. 

I was finally in labor.

I woke 'The Hubs' from his sleep about ten minutes later and told him that I was calling the doctor.  He asked me if I had been timing the contractions.  I told him that I didn't have to.  They were so intense and lasting for what seemed forever and coming faster than I could press the start button on my IPhone app.  I called Dr. D. and she said, at this point, if I had so much as a gas bubble I should go to the hospital. 

What happened next was exactly what happens in the movies when the mom says "it's time".  

'The Hubs' started racing to get the few things we had brought in from the car together. I ow-ow-owed my way through a super quick shower.  We got dressed and ran out the door, so thankful that 'The Littles' were not at home.  I called my parents and told them to hurry up and meet us at the hospital and 'The Hubs' raced us there (though I swear I had never seen him drive any slower).

We arrived at the hospital at 6:15 am.  I had to stop in the lobby to breathe through a contraction.  We were escorted to the labor and delivery unit and told to wait for a nurse to take us to our room.  My parents arrived five minutes later.  We chatted.  I winced and breathed through the pain which was getting more and more intense. 

Thirty minutes later, the nurse who had wait listed me the night before showed us to our room.  She told me that she was so glad I was the one in active labor because she wasn't looking forward to calling me to let me know that my induction had, again, been postponed. 

I got into my gown, hooked up to the monitors and took in the room where we would meet our son.