My Birth Story: Part I

Four days before little miss made her appearance!

I always thought birth stories were a little odd. Part of me enjoyed them because as a nurse, I found the details interesting. Now having gone through it myself, I eat them up. And usually cry a little with both sentiment and solidarity. So here I am, writing my own birth story of our precious baby G. If you're not into this thing, I'm in no way offended. Scroll, skim, or skip. No worries. But I want to have an account of it to share with her when she's older-- and for myself, because some of the details are fading already and it's such an incredible experience that I don't want to forget (well, some of it I do, haha!).

Without further ado...my birth story.

7:30am: One week before my due date, I woke up to a mildly painful contraction. I had had several Braxton Hicks for the past few weeks but nothing that was actually painful, so this was new and interesting. I laid in bed before my alarm and felt a few more so I figured I would tell P. to leave his phone on during the day at work just in case I needed to call him (though I figured even if this was the real thing, which I doubted since it was a week early, we had a long time ahead of us with a first time labor).

After fifteen minutes or so, I got up to get ready for work (my last day before I began maternity leave) and went to the bathroom. There was blood. For someone who's had a miscarriage it's terrifying to see blood during pregnancy at any time. But after the initial wave of fear, I was also somewhat excited. This must be "bloody show" and I knew that meant labor would most likely happen within a few days. I woke P. up and told him I was going to call the on-call doctor for advice.

They didn't call me back at all. So an hour later, my doctor's office was open and I called them instead. The nurse and I discussed my contractions, which were happening fairly frequently between 8-12 minutes apart. They were still only mildly painful and I even laughed through a few of them because it was so fun and funny to think we might be close to the big event. The nurse scheduled me to come in and see them in a few hours, although she mentioned a few times about me going to the hospital instead. I didn't want to go to the hospital because I was sure it was so early and I wanted to labor at home as long as I could-- and/or not get sent back home.

The nurse called to check in on me in an hour and the contractions were still about the same. She told us to pack our hospital bags just in case and to head there instead if the pace picked up or if I had more bleeding (which I was having a little, but being a nurse I'm a stubborn patient and I wanted to see my OB, not the hospital staff).

P. and I were both giddy with nervousness and excitement as we packed things up-- our bags, some snacks, and a giant blue exercise ball to use as a birthing ball.

11:30am We got to the doctor's office and as we waited the hour to see her (good doctors always have long waits...) my contractions slowed to almost every half hour and very irregular. I was glad we had chosen to see the doctor instead of the hospital.

12:30pm Sweet Dr. M saw me and checked me. I was dilated 1cm and I think 90% effaced. She told me she thought I would most likely have the baby within 24 hours and she recommended we go back home, get something to eat, and take a walk to try to bring the contractions back on.

1:00pm We left the doctor's office and decided to go out to eat at Chik-Fil-A down the street just for fun. I was thrilled. We knew baby was coming yet we had a decent amount of time to prepare. (hahaha, not quite as you'll soon see...) We notified our doula of the situation and she encouraged us to go home and labor as long as I could there and to let her know when I wanted her. We texted our families, including a picture of me smiling through a contraction, compliments of P.

1:30pm Chik-Fil-A is one of our favorite restaurants because of their values, polite staff, and delicious food. Now it has an even more special place in our hearts because of that day. My hubby was both nervous and excited and told the cashiers that "my wife is in active labor" after he gave our order. They were two super sweet young ladies who loved hearing that and gave us our meal for free. The manager later came over to our table and gave us several free coupons for sandwiches, because she said we'd enjoy them in the postpartum period. Finally, a sweet young worker came over and asked if she could pray for us. She prayed a beautiful prayer over us and it brought peace to both me and my husband as we had started to get nervous.

During our meal, my contractions had come back. P. joked that it seemed like every time I took a bite of the pickles on my sandwich I had a contraction. He started timing them and I started noticing they were more painful. I had to bend over in my chair between eating...but still kept a smile on my face because, hey, we were in a public restaurant. haha. After a few contractions, I asked him how frequent they were coming.

He looked at me with an odd look on his face and showed me the contraction-counting app as the reality hit us-- they were coming at 3 MINUTES APART.

We smiled nervously and I said, "I think we better go to the hospital."

To be continued!!