Monday, August 8, 2011

Birth Story part 1

Early Saturday morning on the 23rd, I woke up about 3:00 am just like any other morning having to go to the bathroom.  Nothing unusual there.  I got back to bed and all of a sudden a contraction hit me like a ton of bricks.  It literally knocked me over on the bed it hurt so bad.  At the time I figured that I had just twisted wrong getting back in to the bed because between the basket of clothes on one side and the bassinet on the other there was a very small spot for me to climb back in and being as large as I was, it was quite a feat on a normal night.

After that painful thing, I was wide awake so I decided to go get the computer and play a couple games of solitaire.  As I was playing the games the painful twinges happened twice more.  I normally wouldn't have thought anything of it but something in the back of my mind told me that I may want to see if I could time whatever those things were.  Turns out I could.  They were about 10-15 minutes apart or so.  I still didn't think anything of it because I knew that labor would take a really long time, especially since just a few days before my doctor had told me that I was not dilated, not even a little effaced and she wasn't coming any time soon.
 
So I continue to play solitaire and time the contractions.  I don't wake Richard up because I figured that he has to get up at 4:30 for work anyways, and why not just let him sleep that extra hour, because he may need it.

True to form, Richards alarm goes off at 4:30.  I hear it out in the living room so I go in and sit on the bed till he wakes up.  After hitting the snooze button several times he finally does.  I tell him that he has a choice to make.  When he asks what that is, I tell him that he can either go to work and chance having to come home right away, or he can stay with me and go to the hospital later that morning because I have been having very time-able contractions.  It surprises me that he doesn't freak out.  He asks how far along and I tell him that they have been about 10 minutes apart with a couple that were 7.  We talk about it some more and we decide that he should go to work and that I am to call him if they start consistently coming at 7 minutes and he will come right home.  I am OK with this decision.  (although admittedly a little scared that he didn't stay)  and he leaves. 

I try to take it easy the rest of the morning.  I lay on the couch, I watch some TV, play more solitaire, get on facebook.  I tell a couple close by friends what is going on in case all of a sudden I need someone immediately with me at the house.  But then I start noticing something, instead of coming closer together, they are getting further apart...damn!...maybe its not labor afterall and just that false labor that everyone on babycenter.com talks about.  Then I really start freaking out....those things that I was feeling HURT!  If those aren't real contractions, but the false labor that people mention, how the heck am I going to handle real contractions!!!  Well by noon they are about 45 minutes to an hour apart so I decide to start working and see what happens the rest of the day.   I decide to tell Richard to stay at work till he gets his work done that the contractions have slowed down, and I decide not to tell my work about the contractions because I didn't want them to be false labor and freak my work out for nothing, and that if they started coming faster, then I would tell them. 

So I spend the rest of the day sitting and waiting for something to happen.

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