Parker's Birth Story: Part 1

My pregnancy was getting rather uncomfortable but I still wasn't quite ready to be done with it!  Overall I liked being pregnant and I still had lots of things on my to do list to prep for the new baby.

In the middle of the night on Thursday January 23, I woke up with sharp pains right across my lower belly.  They kept me up most of the night, so I was exhausted on Thursday morning.  The pains were very localized to right below my belly, and I figured that I had a UTI or something (thank you google).  However, because I'm a snoop, I knew that my department was holding a surprise shower for me that day, so I had to go to work, I didn't want to screw it up!

I got to work, still having random pains and realized that the shower was in the afternoon, not the morning.  At around 10am I decided to page my midwife.  I had still been having random pains and was a complete emotional mess that morning.  The midwife told me to come into the clinic and she would check me out and that I probably did have  a UTI.  So I told my boss that I would be back in about an hour and a half.

At the midwives, she said it did in fact look like a UTI.  One antibiotic would work better but shouldn't be given within 3 weeks of labour, so she wanted to do a cervical exam to see where I was at.  I was 2cm dilated and 80% effaced. She told me that I could have the baby that weekend or in 4 weeks, but if she had to guess I would definitely have it before 38 weeks.  I figured people walk around 2cm dilated for awhile, so I was probably safe.

Because my blood pressure was high and work had been fairly stressful lately, I decided to go home for the afternoon.  The pain continue and my mom came over and organize my nursery, washed baby clothes and folded my laundry.  

That night, the pain got worse and started radiating around my back and into my belly.  So at about 9:00 I downloaded a contraction timer app and started timing it.  I didn't really think that it was contractions but I thought that I should time it to see if there was a pattern.  They were happening every 6-8 minutes.  I eventually got up from bed to watch a movie and distract myself since I wasn't sleeping anyways.  The contractions were 5 minutes apart and lasted about 45 seconds to a minute.

At around 3am I went to the bathroom and there was a ton of mucusy blood.  So I called my midwife.  At that point Ryan woke up and asked if I was ok.  I told him that he might want to get up because we might be going to the hospital.  When my midwife responded to the page, she said it sounded like I was having my bloody show and was in labour.  While on the phone, contractions let up a bit, so she said to call her back in an hour if they got worse again or call the next morning regardless so that I could update her.

I stuck it out (because I couldn't possibly be in labour at 35 weeks!)  and called her the next morning at around 8:30, still bleeding and still contracting.  She told me to meet her at the hospital at 10:30 so that she could take a look.  

We packed up the bags that I had quickly packed at 3am and headed out.  I told my mom that we were going to the hospital, but would probably be home in a bit.  I told my friend that we would still be coming over for dinner.  At the hospital, the midwife checked me out and said that I was 4cm dilated and definitely in labour.  I was pretty terrified.  I had googled it in the night and knew that 35 week babies typically did fairly well, but I was very concerned about size since I was so small.  Plus I just didn't know what to expect since nobody plans on going into labour at this point, so I just didn't feel ready.  Because the baby was a preemie, the midwife would share care with the doctor.  Which I was happy about because at least my midwife could still be involved.

Stay tuned for Part 2!