First born: Part 1

I should preface this with the fact that this was written as an email first – to a high school friend who is planning her own natural birth. She is my mom pen pal and I am very grateful for her ear.

So here it is. The birth story I should have written MONTHS ago. If you don’t like stories about body fluids, poop [or lack of it] and exploding vaginas, you should probably not read this.

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So my water broke at 9:30AM on 1/28/2010 (3 days before my due date). I was getting ready to go to my 40 week midwife appointment, but first, I was planning on stopping at Wamart to return a Pack+Play we didn’t need. When I lifted the crib, I thought, “Ha, what if this heavy lifting makes my water break!?” So, I was packing up the crib and carried it to the car and, when I opened the door, the dog ran out and jumped in the car. As I was wrangling this 40 pound crib into the car and yelling at the dog, I felt a trickle that was curiously NOT like I was peeing. I say ‘curiously’ because I had been peeing my pants everytime I sneezed/coughed/smiled for about 8 months. This felt different.

So, immediately, my brain started to decompensate and I started to feel like there were cotton balls in my ears (this is a common feeling I get whenever I am nervous or overwhelmed). I called John and his brain also started filling with cotton balls and he was mumbling and pacing, repeating, “Ok. Really? What do I do? Ok. Really? Um. What should I do?????” I think both of us were a little surprised that this was actually happening .

A side note: John is a 1st year Psych resident and he was on-call the night before. So he left for work Wed. morning and worked all day Wednesday and all day Wednesday night. I called him Thursday morning, at which point, he had been awake already for 24 hours. I called to tell him I was in labor and that he could enjoy another 24 hours awake . . . it was really poor timing. Elsa was born at 1:14AM on Friday, so by the time she was born, he had been awake almost 48 hours

I told John to finish up his work and come home whenever he was ready. He asked me, “Are you sure your not just peeing?” and, at that point, I had gone to the bathroom and was SURE it was not pee. The minute I sat on the toilet, nonsese gushed out (maybe 1-2 cups) and was clearish, milkyish colored. Also, there was a little pink blood (which is normal) – no contractions at this point though.

John after 24 hours awake. Filming himself in the bedroom while I go to the midwife. Getting ready for another 24 hours awake.

I decided the plan was that I was going to go to my midwife appointment and pretend like nothing had happened. So I got in the car and started driving. About 10 minutes later, I started feeling really, really mild cramping. It didn’t hurt – the best way I can describe it was like a warm tightening that started low in my pelvis and then reached around into my lower back. I knew they must be contractions though, because I was watching the clock in the car and they were EXACTLY 10 minutes apart.

That is the weirdest thing about labor. Your body becomes this really well-designed machine – I mean, how did my uterus know it had been 9.5 minutes since my last contraction and it was time to start going again? How does your body tell time!? And you have ZERO control over the whole process – it is like this secret world that your body has hidden inside and you don’t know about it until labor starts. Then all these little goblins appear and start controlling the wheels and cogs inside you – looking at their little watches and starting the wheels turning on a very rigid schedule. And I think it is best to just leave it up to them because, oddly, they know exactly what they are doing.

So about 10 minutes after my water broke, I was in the car, driving to my midwife’s office. And it was snowing. Really, really hard. Like white-out snowing. And I realized that, perhaps, my brain full of cotton balls had made a stupid decision. So, at a loss for what to do, I called my midwife’s office and told them that my water had broken and I was on my way. She receptionist looked out the window – at the weather, I imagine – and said, “Your water broke and you are driving? Yourself? You are driving yourself here?” And I shrugged my shoulders and kept driving.

I got there and no one had communicated to my midwife that I was in labor. They strapped me into a continuous monitor for a few minutes to check Elsa’s heart rate, which was fine. I told her I didn’t want her to check my cervix (risk of introducing infection since my water already broken) and she was fine with that. She collected some amniotic fluid from the puddle that I was now sitting in – and looked at it under the microscope to confirm that it was not pee (which was obvious at this point). She said I had 24 hours (9:30 AM the next morning) to have this baby or I would need a dose of antibiotics. She sounded like she was pretty sure I would still be pregnant at the same time the next morning – but I was pretty determined not to be.

Basically, the appointment was just a big, “Why are you here?” and she sent me back home. In the snow. Which was awesome.

To Be Continued . . . Go to Part 2