Birth Story Part 1

Well, pardon my absence and lack of 37 week recap, but as you might have guessed (or seen, if you follow me on Twitter), I had the baby this week!

37 1/2 weeks pregnant.

So as not to leave you all hanging til the end of the birth story, here is our little girl- Allison May!  Born February 13, 2013, 7 lbs 13 oz, 19 inches long.  We are so in love :)

Allie's birth story really began early Monday morning, around 2am.  I started getting contractions and had them up til when I got up to get ready for work.  I also lost my mucus plug (or sometimes called "bloody show")!  I wasn't sure what to do, so I got in the shower and proceeded with my normal routine.  Greg thought I should try going to work and didn't believe it was the real thing.  By the time I was leaving for work the contractions were pretty much gone and I worked all day.  I saw my chiropractor on Monday and he told me that if the contractions weren't the real thing that the a shower or bath kind of makes them stop- interesting.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning and the same thing basically happened AGAIN- around 2am I started having contractions again!  I dealt with them for a while and then around 3:30-4am, Greg suggested I try taking a shower like my chiro had mentioned to see if they went away again, but this time they didn't.  If anything they got more intense and closer together after I got out.  I used a contraction app on my phone to track them and and one point they were about 5 minutes apart and I could tell Greg was taking them seriously this time compared to yesterday and was frantically packing a bag, cleaning our bunny cages, and doing any last minute things he could think of in case we headed to the hospital.

I called my OBGYN's after hours line and explained what was happening, from the mucus plug yesterday to the frequency and duration of the contractions.  The nurse I talked to told me to hang out for another hour or so and call back and see where I was at.  In the meantime I called my parents, who want to be here for the birth and filled them in.  They decided to wait and see how things went as well.  When I called my office back the second time, I was still having the contractions regularly but at the same time, I didn't feel like it had progressed to a level of "GET ME TO THE HOSPITAL NOW".  I feel like the second nurse picked up on this and advised me that she thought I should keep laboring at home and see how things went and go to my schedule OBGYN appointment at 11am to have my progress checked.

In the mean time, Greg and I finished packing, ate some breakfast, and decided to take Clyde for a walk around the neighborhood, because the second nurse mentioned walking and standing would help things progress.

Clyde was really worried about me all morning.

Finally 11am came and we were seen at my doctor's office.  I was 80% effaced and 3cm dilated.  My doc said I should probably head home for a while and see if the contractions picked up and if I made it to 5 minutes apart consistently, I could come back to the office for a recheck if it happened before the office closed.

We headed home and I was exhausted.  I have had two nights in a row with really interrupted sleep from the contractions.  I took a bath and then tried to take a nap, but again, that's hard when you're being woken up with contractions every 6-10 minutes.  It didn't really work out to get much sleep.

We thought about taking another neighborhood walk, but I honestly wasn't sure I could do it since the contractions were getting more difficult to get through.  We decided to run to the grocery store, because I got the idea in my head that Popsicles sounded good, and we were low on TP anyway.  I used a cart so I could bend over the handle and get through the contractions when I had them, even though we only got a couple items!

I got my Popsicles, and Greg and I went home and watched some Walking Dead on Netflix (we just finished Breaking Bad and have moved on to Walking Dead as our new series to watch together) while I talked with friends and family on and off throughout the afternoon.

I used a contraction timer app on my phone, but it relies on you to be really good about starting the timer when they start and stopping it when they stop to get your accurate average of how far apart the contractions are, which didn't always work out when I was on the phone or forgot to turn it on or off once in a while, so I never really could tell if I was really at 5 minutes apart for contractions or not, they would fluctuate anywhere between 4 1/2 minutes apart and sometimes closer to 10 minutes apart.  It was pretty confusing and I never ended up going back to the doctor for a recheck because I didn't know if the contractions were close enough together.

Finally around 3ish, I talked to my mom and we decided they should head up from Hilton Head because my contractions weren't going away, seemed as strong or stronger, and I just had a feeling that this was really it and then we'd be heading to the hospital that night.

My parents arrived around 8pm, and pretty much right when they arrived we decided to just head right to the hospital, which ended up being the right decision because in the 15-20 minute drive to the hospital I had about 4 pretty strong contractions.

To be continued...