Monday, July 4, 2011

Call Me John Denver

Christopher and I had a very unexpected, but very exciting weekend that has resulted in a packed hospital bag. We are ready to go!

I woke up at 3am on Sunday thinking my water might have broken. I wasn't 100% sure (since I've never had it happen before - lol) so I didn't wake Christopher up. I just kept getting up to go to the bathroom over and over and over without any relief. By 4am, I'd been to the bathroom five times. Evey was going crazy. I've never felt her moving the way she was and her hyper-activity made me a nervous.

Inside I was freaking out because it was much too early for my water to break. We were over a week away from being considered "full term" and we definitely didn't want Evey to be a preemie. Part of me wanted to wait until our scheduled appointment to see what the doctor said.

Finally Christopher became semi-conscious and I told him what I thought was going on, but we both ended up falling back to sleep. The next morning, I felt so strange. Evey was still over-active and I still felt like I was leaking. Christopher was ready to head straight to the hospital but I called my mom and told her what was going on. She said I should just call my doctor's office and talk to the doctor on call.

When I called, amazingly enough, my doctor was the one on call. I was relieved to the point of tears - she knew me and Evey, and she would be straight with me about whatever was going on. When she called me back, she told me to come on in to Labor & Delivery and she'd check me out just to be safe. If my water had broken, they didn't want to risk infection or cord prolapse which could be devastating both of us. I asked her if it would be okay if I took a shower and she said since it had been almost six hours since I thought my water broke it would be better for me to get in ASAP.

We hadn't packed anything yet - even though the bump told me to get it done by 35 weeks, I'd been procrastinating. So I told Christopher to throw some stuff together and I took a 7 minute shower while he packed. We were on our way within 10. It was the most bizarre feeling. We were driving to the hospital, possibly to have our baby. We were giddy and frazzled and obviously not thinking completely cleearly. Our conversation was simply anxious chatter about Warwick Drive and how if we lived on that street we could be midgets like Warwick Davis.

We finally made it in and Christopher dropped me off at the front entrance without deciding where we'd meet. I tried calling him from the hospital phone - of course I didn't have my own - when he came running around the corner.

We made our way to the second floor and got checked in, then went to the nurses station to get our room. On our way into the room, someone said "Hey strangers - guess who's going to be your nurse!" It was the instructor from our labor classes. I don't know if I mentioned before how amazing she was, but at the end of our three sessions, I asked if it would be possible to request her when we came in. She said just to let them know a the nurses station and if she was on duty and available, they'd be more than happy to let her work with us.

I told Evey that if she wanted to come early, she picked the PERFECT time to do it. Our doctor was the one on call, Annalisa was our nurse - without even having to ask. Everything was lining up perfectly and I was much more relaxed because I knew I was in great hands!

After a long string of medical history questions and once I was hooked up to the monitors (which Evey hated) Annalisa checked to see if my water had broken or not. Fortunately, my water was still in tact, so we were in much better condition to have a full term baby. She asked if I'd been having any contractions and from what I could tell, I hadn't. After three hours on their monitor, though, I was definitely able to recognize the contractions that I was having. They were just little contractions and not painful at all. It just felt like Evey was pushing out on my tummy with all of her strength.

We found out that, on top of my contractions, I was 1cm dilated. In order to start pushing, I'll have to be dilated to 10cm. I was 50% effaced, which means that my cervix was thinned halfway. In order to deliver, I'll need to be 100% effaced. Also, we learned that Evey had dropped to a -2 station in my pelvis. The station is a scale to see where the baby is in the birth canal. The scale starts at -4 (where the baby is not in the birth canal at all). Once you get to a +3 station the baby is crowning, so Evey is on her way down and out! The most important thing we learned was that I'm not completely crazy. This baby is coming and will be here before we know it!

I could stay this way for weeks, or I could have the baby within a few days. It all depends on how Evey feels about entering the world!

We were able to leave the hospital with the baby still inside, which was a major blessing and I've never been so happy to have someone tell me that I just peed on myself!

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