Tuesday the 4th, I was awakened at 1:30am with some pretty strong and consistant contractions, 10 minutes apart. They were pretty painful so I was quite certain labor was starting. I tried my best to sleep, but wasn't able to, until they ended up all but stopping at 5am. I had a few contractions throughout the day, and while they were very sporadic and far apart, they really hurt! I wasn't able to walk or talk through them for the most part. Of course I still had lots to do that day, including closing out the apartment lease, getting the kids to school, etc.
I met Will for lunch and he decided to go home the rest of the day with how I was acting. I wasn't feeling quite right all day, I didn't feel like I was "in labor" but I felt slightly shaky and queasy, and very achy all over. When we got home from lunch I decided to take a nap, and Will came to wake me up at 3:20 for us to pick up the kids from school. I had another really strong contraction and had to stop and breathe through it. At that point I decided I better call my doctor to get a quick check, and see if anything was actually happening or if it was just false labor.
We went in and I was dilated to a 5 but still not feeling many contractions. They did an NST and said "Umm, you need to go to the hospital NOW. Baby looks great, but she's going to be here soon."
Oookay. Well. I wasn't really concerned, I tend to have gentle labors that aren't super fast, so I figured I had a few hours to go. We went home, got our bags and things and found someone to watch the kids till Jon and Melissa could come up from Charlotte to get them. By then I was starting to feel regular contractions every few minutes.
Just as we were leaving, a furniture delivery truck pulled up. It was our new couch and chairs for our living room. We really didn't want to miss it, so we decided to stay. We told them our situation and asked them to just really quickly drop it off and go, not set it up. They set it up. 😑 It took forever. I was outside leaning against the car at that point breathing through the contractions which were starting to pick up.
Then an ADT salesman walked up to me. I wasn't very capable of holding a conversation and told him we were about to go to the hospital to have a baby. He was like "Ohh, like, your water broke??" I said no, but I'm in labor and we need to go. He said he wouldn't take up our time then. And went and found Will, and asked if he wanted to sign up for security service. Will said no, not interested, and we're going to the hospital in a minute here. ADT guy kept at it! "Well you can just sign up for 30 days free and see what you think, blah blah blah." He finally left and the furniture people were wrapping it up. As we're getting into the car, one of them started in with "I see you have a moving pod here, did you like it? How much was it?" Will and I were both kind of like, ummm, can people not take a hint here??
Finally everyone left and we were free to leave for the hospital at about 6:45. All the way to the hospital I started shaking terribly, going through transition. I was handling the contractions okay but had the familiar feeling of "I really don't want to do this. Why am I doing this again??" Pulled into the parking garage at 7:05, and had to stop a few times on the way to the maternity area to get through the contractions. They were very intense now.
Got up to the maternity area and they were supposed to have a room ready to go for us - they didn't. They put us in the waiting room there. There was one other couple waiting, presumably she was also in labor. She was quietly watching TV. At that point I was really uncomfortable and feeling the urge to push. It was pretty awkward trying to hold back in the waiting room there. Apparently the husband of the other couple was looking pretty freaked out by it. 😂 I was nearly past the point of caring but still felt embarrassed to be in that state in front of random strangers in a waiting room.
I was quite literally crying to Will that if they didn't get me a room right away, the baby would be born in the waiting room. The nurse shows up and says....we don't have a room yet, hold on. You would think she would see the state I was in and be more concerned, but she was completely indifferent. The other lady in the waiting room asked in what seemed to me, to be a very whiny tone of voice "What about meeeee??" I was kind of floored by that. 😲 It was like she hadn't heard a thing the entire time. The nurse said in a slightly annoyed tone "We'll get to you." She FINALLY brought me to the delivery room around 7:45.
I was slightly disoriented now from being stressed out and trying so hard to NOT have a baby yet. I changed into my hospital gown. They asked if I needed to use the bathroom and I said yes - at which point they handed me a tiny cup. I kind of cried/laughed and said forget it. I can barely stand up and the contractions are directly on top of each other.
Got on the bed, the nurse checked me, said I was complete (not surprising, as the baby was crowning already...). It went from 1 nurse in the room with us to suddenly 10 people, everyone was in a huge flurry to get ready. The doctor ran into the room, just barely had time to put on gloves, and caught the baby at 7:59pm.
Funny note, they put me down as a patient at another facility, so it was a totally random doctor that came and caught the baby rather than mine. I really didn't care at all at that point of course, it was just, someone please catch the baby!
Interestingly my water didn't break until the baby was already halfway out, so that was kind of cool. I have never had the midwives or doctors NOT break my water so I always wondered what might happen if they didn't.
It was overall a very easy labor and delivery, despite being stressful at the end! Thank goodness Will was there to keep me grounded and not panic. (And be able to hide his own panic, haha.) We are settling in at home now and getting lots of sweet baby snuggles!
