I got home from work, as usual, around 6:00 pm. I was tired, but it was Thursday, which meant Friday was just a day away. Dad had a date to play video games with his Clemson friends at 8 that night, so I was prepared with some Northern Exposures on DVD. It was promising to be a quiet night, as all our nights had been for more than a week.
At around 7pm, I became aware of a twinge in my abdomen. Late pregnancy is all about twinges and pains, and your body being weird, and I had the feeilng that this twinge had been happening for a little while and I was just now noticing it. I put it in the back of my mind, and made a shrimp stir fry that your dad and I enjoyed on the couch in front of Northern Exposure, a pair of slobs. Then he hopped on the video games and I got myself an absolutely astronomical pitcher of water and began to suck it down, along with a Gatorade. I put my feet up, and watched Northern Exposure, and kept my spidey sense intuned with the belly twinge.
At around 8:30 or 9:00 pm I started to write down times of the twinges. They were definitely continuing, even with the feet up and the gargantuan water consumption, which is one sign that labor is FO REALZ and not just FO FUN. They were all over the place – 30-45 seconds long, but anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes apart. They weren’t particularly painful at this point, but definitely there, and I knew I was having contractions. The question was just whether or not they were real.
At around 10 or so, I showed your dad my list of times. He asked me if I would like him to quit playing, and I said not to quit. I was really fine, and I was not interested in sitting around staring at each other for hours. I knew first time labor could last 24 hours or more, so the longer we could stay home and stay distracted, the happier I would be. One thing I did notice was that the pains came on sudden and strong every time I used the restroom, which, given the amount of water I was drinking and the size of the human pushing on my bladder, was often. I tried not to let them make me scared of peeing, though I would sort of brace myself on the side of the bathroom sink every time.
Our bags had been packed, minus the few last minute items that we needed day to day. At around 11pm, I asked your dad to quit gaming and help me pull together those last few things (his friend Evan suspected what was going on, but dad denied it.) I’d listed them all and put the list in our bag; i.e., toothbrush, hairbrush, makeup, etc. I tried to walk around with purpose as I collected these items, because I know that faux labor can also be halted by activity. Instead, walking around made the pains worse. I found myself leaning over countertops during contractions, holding tight, and having to breathe into them. I could still talk through them, and they weren’t that godawful, but they were definitely getting stronger. My mucus became bloody at this point, too, and I knew my cervix was changing. I asked dad to go and get my birth ball and bring me some water, and then we sat together and watched Northern Exposure, and I rocked around on the birth ball and moaned my way through my still not regular contractions while dad timed.
Sometime before midnight I went to the bathroom and liquid dripped down my leg. I was sure my water had broken and was trickling out. We called the midwife, and she asked me a few questions. She wasn’t certain, so she told me to lie down for an hour and then to stand up suddenly. If water gushed out when I stood, then that would mean it had leaked out and then pooled, and it was broken, and I had to come in. If it didn’t gush, then it was probably something else. I did this experiment and did not get satisfactory results – I still wasn’t sure. So the midwife, Kathy Higgins, told us to come in. Bring your bags, she said, but be prepared to go back home because chances are this is nothing.
The bumps on the drive gave me little mini contractions all the way. I was still doing ok at this point, but beginning to have to focus. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that you were on your way, and also no doubt that I was making progress. They were rocking me a bit. But I was totally in control. I was not rattled. I was riding the wave, on top of the pain, heading into parenthood with all my wits about me.
We got to the hospital and I had my first really bad contraction. We were standing outside the entrance to the Children’s Hospital, and I had to grab dad for a minute and breathe into his neck. Animal sounds escaped me. It hurt, it hurt a lot, but only for a few seconds. And then we were walking again, walking up to the check in desk, giving our names, getting our stick-on nametags, and taking the Stork elevator up to Labor and Delivery. I was taken to triage then, and handed a gown to wear and a paper thing to put over my lap. As I removed all of my clothes,