Whew! This girl is the queen of False Alarms. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks! With at least 3 nights where I woke up Andre and said “ow! I think this is it”…only to fall asleep and wake up at 6am still very pregnant.
And then…finally. Just one day shy of my estimated due date, I woke up at 3am with the same old contractions that I was sure were going to go away. And then 4am came. Still going at a steady 8ish minutes apart. And then 5am came. I finally poked Andre and told him they were getting more intense. I chugged a bottle of water and paced the house a bit. At 6am, I went for a little stroll up the street, where I said Hello to our new neighbor, and then bent over to deal with a contraction as soon as he drove out of sight. Upon returning from my sunrise stroll, I gave the midwives a call. At first she wasn’t so sure I should be rushing in, but then she heard me try to talk through 2 contractions during our short phone conversation. She then switched her tune and recommended I come in within the next hour.
I woke up my mom and asked her to make me an omelet “real quick”. I think I had her in a panic as she rushed to get something into my stomach while Andre loaded the car. I knew the hospital would have an issue with my wanting to eat while in labor, so I was determined to get a meal in before we got there just to avoid an awkward conversation.
At the time I was hovering around 6 minutes apart. By the time we got in the car and started driving (30 minutes after my talk with the midwife), I was a consistent 3 minutes….oops! I got there in time (7am now), was wheeled into the room and we settled in for the long haul. The midwife, Sue, came in to introduce herself and let me know that I was a solid 9cm! BAM! It was go time! I had thought I would want to get into a tub and soak for a bit…nope. Even the birth ball didn’t sound good and I ended up laboring in the one place I swore I would hate…the hospital bed. Sue let me do my thing for a while and around 9:30 my waters were broken and I began to push. Sue and the nurse were impressed with how I handled the labor and pushing. They kept calling me a “poster child” and joking that I should be on the hospital’s birth video. Ha! …no thanks. 🙂
Sweet Olivia was born at 10:29, nursed 10 minutes later, and cuddled up for a good long nap.