Yep, Little G decided to make his grand entrance one week early! I guess he had had enough of all of the smack I was talking about him on this blog, so he decided to stick it to me. Literally.
I woke up, as usual, in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I went back to bed and reached for my phone. I heard this strange faint popping noise and then felt a small gush of fluid. My first thought was, "Huh, that is weird. I JUST went to the bathroom, so I don't think I peed my pants." However, I wasn't entirely convinced that my bag of water had really broken because it wasn't a huge tsunami AND it seemed impossible with the Little Man still being positioned so high up.
Nonetheless, I didn't really think I had peed my pants because: (a) I had just gone to the bathroom and (b) I haven't peed my pants since childhood. What is one to do in these situations at 4 a.m.? Get a second opinion! I called my sister, hoping she would be awake since she has a newborn. Thankfully she wasn't awake but did answer my call. :)
After hearing my story, she thought it was my bag of water. I felt better since now I was ruling out that I hadn't wet the bed, but now it was starting to seem surreal that I might actually be having a baby (!) within the next 24 hours.
My mom must have heard all of the movement from downstairs (side note: we were still staying at my parents' casa while our house was construction zone) because she came up to make sure I was okay. Without explaining why, I asked her to smell the wet spot on the sheets. She couldn't smell anything, so I officially ruled out urine as the culprit. Thanks, Mom, for being a good sport and smelling the bed sheets at 4 in the morning.
I then started calling R repeatedly because as luck would have it, he had gone over to our house that night to move things up to the attic and had crashed there. He was not answering his phone, so in the meantime, I was packing my hospital bag (yeah, I know I should have already done this...) and calling the nurse line to see if they thought I should check in.
The doctor on call recommended that I head to the hospital, and R finally answered his phone and came to get me. It was still very surreal knowing that the next time I would come home would be with a baby. Eeek!
We got to the hospital and got checked in. I had to change into one of their glamorous gowns and they did a test to confirm or deny my water breaking assumption. The first test came back negative, which of course made me feel like an idiot and at the same time disgusting for peeing in my pants. They did a more thorough test and that one came back positive (woohoo!). Besides the embarrassment of thinking that peeing in your pants = your water breaking, I would have NEVER lived that one down and would have endured endless teasing from my family. Thank you Baby Jesus that it wasn't the case.
The doctor then checked to see where I was at and decided that I should have pitocin since I was only 1.5 cm dilated. I had already made up my mind to have an epidural if I ended up going the pitocin route, and although I was a little bit disappointed I wasn't going to try the "au naturale" route that I had envisioned, I knew I would be a lot more comfortable getting the good stuff once things really cranked up.
My labor pretty much went like this:
7 a.m. - 1.5 cm dilated, got pitocin to speed things up
9 a.m. - doc broke my water, since I was only slowly leaking and the bag was still intact
10 a.m. - 3 cm dilated
11 a.m. - 4 cm dilated, got my epidural
2 p.m. - 10 cm dilated and ready to push! Everyone was very surprised with how fast I progressed. I guess my body reacts kindly to pitocin.
One of my good friends was asking me what the contractions felt like, and I really had a hard time remembering the pain. I have heard before that you block out the memories of the pain post labor, and I guess what they say is true! I remember them being A LOT more uncomfortable laying down than sitting up, so I chose to get out of bed and sit in the rocking chair. I kept my eyes closed throughout most of the labor process so I could concentrate on my breathing and not on the pain. Once I got my epidural, I was restricted to the bed but couldn't feel anything. Some positives to that, but also some drawbacks.
More on that later...
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