Birth Story: How It Started

Last traditional picture. Taken around 2am on May 8th before we got in the car for the hospital.

On Saturday, May 7^th, Andrew and I went to bed at about 10:00pm. At about 11:30pm I awoke to contraction and my water leaking. Some women experience a gush of water, and their bag of water (amniotic fluid) breaks all the way. Mine simply got a whole and leaked with tiny gushes here and there. I woke Andrew up at about midnight after I was sure my water was leaking and that my contractions were continuing. He stayed up with me as I went through each contractions and he paid attention to how long they were lasting, and the intervals in between each one so I wasn’t the one watching the clock. My contractions were a constant 5 to 6 minutes apart, and growing in intensity. So since that was going on, and my water was leaking, we decided it was time to call Doc. S at 1:30am and let him know what was going on and ask if we should go to the hospital or stay home. 

Off to the hospital and about to become parents!

Doc. S said it sure sounded like labor had started and to go ahead and go to the hospital so I could be checked on there. So we grabbed our things and got ready to go the whole three minutes it takes us to go to the hospital from our home. We got checked in, went to my LDRP (labor-delivery-recovery-postpartum) room to get hooked up to monitors so they could track my contractions, and Kayley’s heart rate, and waited for a bit so information could be gathered. Kayley was doing fine, but unfortunately my contractions decided to start to become irregular (most likely due to anxiety about the whole ordeal). So they took me off the monitors and had me walk up and down the hall for hours to help my contractions get going. It definitely helped them stay consistent and grow in intensity, but whenever I stopped to rest a bit my contractions would go from 5 minutes apart to about 8-10 minutes apart. It was very frustrating. 

Attached to the monitors.

Oh, they also check to make sure my water had started to leak. They basically did a swab test and sent it to a lab, but the results came back negative. I told my nurse that I was 100% sure my water was leaking and that the test was wrong. She told me the test can come back negative sometimes when it’s actually positive and that she’d check my next pad (when you’re leaking amniotic fluid you of course want to be wearing something to catch it all. Don’t want it ruining your clothes). And yup, sure enough, the nurse concluded that yes my water was leaking and the test came back wrong.

Normally I think they would have sent a pregnant woman home with her leaking water and inconsistent contractions, but since I was scheduled to be induced the next day, they decided to go ahead and keep me there and just go ahead with induction – especially since my contractions weren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing. They weren’t even helping me dilate more! Doc S came by the hospital around 10am Sunday morning to check on me, and my cervix was still only 2cm dilated, same as my last check-up appointment with him a week earlier. And after so much walking, hard contractions, and no sleep! I was not very happy with my body and getting frustrated about it too. Yet at the same time I wasn’t super worried or upset. By this time my mom and sister, Heidi, had also joined us at the hospital to be my other support people.

So Doc S and I decided that it was time for some Pitocin. Pitocin is a medication that is a form of oxytocin. And oxytocin is a natural hormone in your body that helps to stimulate contractions. Pitocin helps to induce labor, but can also make contractions stronger and harder to manage. So I was given some Nubain to help handle the pain (it’s like morphine). All this was administrated via an IV that took them four sticks to get into one of my finicky veins. We shortly discovered that a side effect I have to Pitocin is a bad stutter. That was annoying to deal with, but it could have been worse.

And that’s where I’ll leave you for now. The rest of the story will come later. After all, my newborn babe deserves and needs lots of love and attention. 

Kayley on her floor gym for the first time.