My Birth Story:
This pregnancy was definitely an interesting one! It was very different from my two boys in general, but was also unusual in that I had an appendectomy at 29 weeks! Yeah, that was fun. After that there was such a concern about the baby coming early that waiting until my scheduled c-section at 40 weeks seemed unlikely. I had pretty frequent contractions since my surgery in May, but I just got used to them.
My husband’s main concern was being able to make it to the Oregon Brew Fest on Thursday the 24th, or the day before this little girl was scheduled to arrive. As the weeks went on and she didn’t make her appearance, it seemed he was going to to get what he wanted. The day came and he caught the bus down to the Waterfront leaving me with the boys.
The boys and I had a good day, but it was strange knowing that the next day I was going to have my baby girl. It was a really odd feeling that I can’t quite describe knowing that everything was all planned, even down to the time. I didn’t really like the idea of choosing her birthday either.
My husband got home later that evening. Some friends drove him home and came in for a minute to say hi. I had a couple pretty strong contractions while they were there, but didn’t think much of it. It kind of made these childless friends a little nervous though! The ones I had been having the last day or two were definitely getting stronger, but I knew I’d still be going in for my c/s the next day and had been contracting so long it didn’t seem like a big deal.
I had procrastinated getting a lot of stuff ready during the day (still hadn’t packed my bag or anything) and was up later than I wanted to be, but I was nervous and excited anyway making it hard to want to go to bed. We hadn’t even fully decided on a middle name since I was not sure anymore of our original choice. I did go to bed around 11ish or so figuring I had plenty of time in the morning since we didn’t need to go to the hospital until 10:30. I had a couple of pretty strong contractions again and DH made a joke about the baby needing to wait until tomorrow since he needed to sleep after drinking all that beer.
At about 1 I was having enough strong contractions that there was no way I was sleeping. They were about 5-6 minutes apart. I decided to go downstairs and finish watching So You Think You Can Dance. I was hoping the contractions would stop and I could get back to sleep. That was one nice thing I thought about having a scheduled c/s was being all nice and rested when you go in! Well after a couple of hours, I decided that maybe I should call the hospital since the ctx were just getting stronger. Of course they tell me I have to come in! For some reason I was thinking that maybe they wouldn’t..
I had to call my mom to come over and watch the boys. She of course had stayed up late too thinking she could sleep in in the morning. Then I went and woke up DH and told him we had to go to the hospital. He said, “Why?” I told him I was in labor! I took a quick shower, which felt nice, got dressed and by then my mom was there and we were off!
When we got there I had to be put on the monitors and was given some pain meds and terb to slow down the labor. It didn’t help much so the OB came in and off we went to the OR. She got stuck in traffic, so it was a little later than they had wanted, but we were fine. It was really strange having a c/s being as lucid as I was. With the boys I had been in labor so long, I was really out of it. They did all their stuff and got me ready to go and before I knew it they had already started. Baby Girl was born at 9:09am and was 9lb 7.5oz and 19.75in. and just perfect. I was so glad that in the end she really was meant to come on her birthday and her name suited her perfectly.
Baby Girl was born a week ago today and things are going pretty well. The boys love her, although their biggest complaint is that she sleeps too much! She has really just fit into our family like she was supposed to be here all along. It truly is amazing.
