How EG came into the world (part one)

I have had a lot of amazing things happen in my life. I’m a really lucky girl. But as cliché as it is, this was the most exciting day of my life (so far.) This is the story of my baby’s birth for the ones of you that wanted to know. If you didn’t, oh well. I’ll try to keep is as PG as possible but there was a baby being born, so crazy junk happens. Just warning you.

I wanted to work right up to having the baby. I don’t like to sit around and twiddle my thumbs, and I didn’t want to waste any of my time off from work and I was feeling good (aside from the fact that my feet had swollen so much, they resembled small boats. I was looking good.) In your final month of pregnancy, you visit your doctor every week and they check you to see how you are progressing. My due date was February 12th, and my doctor had said I would probably be late. So much so in fact, that at my weekly appointment on February 6th, we starting talking about ways to induce. Baby was happy as a clam, and feeling as good inside as I was outside apparently. So Thursday night February 9th I had dinner with two of my friends, came home and went to bed. I had the weekend off and my big plans were to spend Friday night watching “Star Trek” and eating spaghetti with our friends/may as well be family Becca and Calin, and to spend all day Sunday in bed watching old movies. My Sunday was spent in a very different way than I could have imagined, which included no old movies or sleep.

Friday morning, February 12th I went to work at 6:30am feeling a little “weird”. I called my doula who said I was probably fine (only 1 in 10 women’s water breaks before they go into labor, so chances of this were low. Plus you can’t miss it, it’s like a huge gush from what they tell you.) I called the nurse at my doctors office. “Oh honey, it sounds like you may have just peed your pants” she told me. (Okay lady, I have had no bladder control problems up until now, so I don’t think this is what happened, but whatever.) That lovely sensation continued throughout the morning, so I called my doula again. She asked if I had started having contractions, I said “Nope! Feel fine.” So she told me she would check in again around dinner time.

At this point, all of my concentration had gone out the window, work was slow, and so I left early. I got two fish tacos from the Whole Foods food truck for lunch (if you have not tried these, they are AMAZING!), and drove home. Thinking that babe was probably going to be arriving in the near future (but not SO near) I wanted to be on my game, so I cleaned the kitchen and was about to start a load of laundry, when it happened. It was not a gush, like some folks say, but there was a noticeable amount of water that broke. “Huh” I thought, so I called my nurse again. “Well, it still sounds like it may be bladder control issues, but since it’s a Friday let’s out your mind at ease before the weekend and we will get you in at 4:30”. Great, I think! I’ll go in, we will see Dr. Wolanski, and then we will come home for our Italian feast and movie night. So continuing to get my ducks in a row, I take a shower, feed the cats, Al gets home, and we head out to the doctors (stopping to pay an almost overdue parking ticket on our way) while I call my dad, sister and Becca to give them the update. “Just going in for a checkup, baby probably won’t be here ‘till Monday, but I’ll keep you posted”.

While in the waiting room at our doctors office, we ran into my mama friend Naomi and her husband Andy. (They used a midwife who works with our doctor.) She had been due two days prior, and was in for her weekly checkup. I gave her the update, she went in to see her midwife, and we got called in to see Wolanski. He told me that it may be hard to see if my water had broken, but he would check. “Oh yeah. Your water DEFFINITLY broke. When did this happen?” he asked. “Uh….4am….7am….2pm….?” I said. So we were told that we were going to be admitted to the hospital, and they were going to give me cytotec, which would start the thinning if the cervix to begin inducing contractions. Wait, what?!?!? I had big plans of relaxing and sleep for my weekend! I was only dilated 1 cm, but everything else looked good, and luckily we had planned ahead and had the hospital bag in the car for a few weeks. I called my sister, dad and Becca and said “um….looks like instead of pasta, I’ll be having a baby tonight.” Okay, I don’t think that’s what I said. I probably said something more like “OHMYGODIAMHAVINGABABYTONIGHTANDWEAREGOINGINTOTHEHOSPITALRIGHTNOW!” So we went across the street, and checked into the hotel Martha Jefferson for the weekend. I strolled on in with my rolling suitcase, all like “that’s right. I’m about to have a baby! Bring it!”

We got registered, I changed into my fashionable birthing gown (so cute! I totally recommend them, and it's worth it to feel cute when you look like a whale and are potentially going to be in the most pain of your life, let me just say), Wolanski gave me the cytotic and I relaxed for an hour. Here I am, in all my disposable delivery gown ginormous glory. Probably on the phone with dad or Becca. They hooked me up to a monitor so we could track my contractions (which I finally started realizing I was having.) Then the party really got started. (Soon to come, part two where I learn that it is possible to pop all the blood vessels in ones face and what it really means to push.)