Andrew's Arrival-- Part 1

I know many are waiting to hear the birth story. Am going to try getting it posted over the next couple of days and posts. Mainly, because I'm sure it will be lengthy, and am just as sure the little guy won't give me a solid block of time enough to do it all at once. At least not with the way he's been eating the last couple of days. I swear I don't know where he puts it all! But anyways!

I woke up around 3:30 Saturday (11/11) morning to go to the bathroom. While up, I got hit with a contraction like I'd never felt before. It hurt and definitely required some focused breathing, but was over in a minute, so I didn't think much of it. I continued to have contractions like that the rest of the morning... though without any regularity to them. At most, they were about 20 minutes apart. Just long enough that they kept me from getting any more sleep because just as I'd finaly doze off, the next one would come along and wake me up again.

We got up around 7 or so and went about our usual day. Showered. Figured out what errands we needed to run. Ate some breakfast. I continued to have the off and on contraction, some fairly painful, some nothing more than the braxton-hicks I'd grown so used to, and still nothing ever closer than 10 minutes apart... but generally closer to 20-30 minutes.

We went to the mall to visit my friend at Build-a-Bear and walk around a bit. If this was indeed pre-labor, I figured the walking might help. Chatted with J for a while and purchased the latest animal for our collection. The walking made the contractions stronger... to the point I had to stop and wait for them to pass sometimes... but, once I stopped walking, the contractions stopped too. At this point, I was still convinced they were more of the BH and they were just getting stronger, as they had been doing all week.

From there, we went to Target to pick up a couple of things and then went home. The lack of sleep and contracting had me feeling overall yucky, so I ate some soup for lunch and took a short nap. Was hard to sleep, so my nap only lasted about 30 minutes. The day wore on and turned to evening and the contractions got stronger and started coming more often. We decided to try timing them. Still nothing closer than 10 minutes. By 9:30, they had stretched back out to almost 30 minutes. Clearly, I was still dealing with the obnoxious pre-labor stuff and the "real thing" was not going to happen until my induction scheduled in two more days.

We went to bed around 11 or so, and I laid in bed and watched TV for a bit while the hubby snoozed. I couldn't get comfortable, no matter what I tried, and was feeling very restless. Finally, I fell asleep around midnight. The sleep was very short-lived. At 12:45 I was jerked from my sleep by a very strong, intense, painful contraction. I couldn't even move it hurt so bad! Once it passed, I got up and went to the bathroom, where I experienced another contraction like that. Went out, got a blanket and sat on the birthing ball as yet another contraction started. That made 3 in 15 minutes. Poor hubby. When the 4th contraction started, he was awakened by my punching his leg and shouting "Get UP!" in a none-t0-pleasant voice.

He got up and started timing the contrax, and would rub my lower back through each one to help me get through the pain. I stayed on the birthing ball, because standing made them sooo much worse. My doctor's orders were to call once the contractions were 5 minutes apart and had been going on for at least 2 hours... which meant we had a while ahead of us. Mine had started at the 5 minute mark and stayed there. Occassionally, they'd stretch to 7 or get as close as 3, but 5 was pretty much the norm.

Unfortunately, instead of the nice "feel it ease up, get stronger and stronger, peak and go away, lasting for about a minute" contractions they described in our childbirth class and in everything else I had ever read.......... my contractions started strong, stayed strong, and lasted 1 1/2 to 2 muinutes each time. We were going on 3AM, I'd been contracting for 2 straight hours like that, and was already exhausted having been awake for close to 24 hours at this point. Time to call the doctor.

The on-call doc returned our call very quickly. She asked what I was dilated to at my last appt, which was Friday (11/10) and at that point I was only at 1cm. Described everything to her and she said she felt like it was still early enough that the contrax were probably not doing much yet to change my cervix, and suggested I continue to labor at home. I told her they were feeling really intense and I was having a hard time getting through them, so she said I could go to the hospital if I wanted, but be prepared to be sent home if I wasn't dilated enough yet.

So little did she know............