Birth story Part 1

I feel like things got started at my doctor's appointment Monday morning. We had a biophysical profile done, which Truffle passed with flying colors - it sounds like the hardest thing for a lot of babies is the practice breathing, which he had been doing at every u/s since 31 weeks, so we got those points almost immediately. Kidneys were slightly more dilated, but still not affecting the structure, so the doc saw no need to move up the planned induction date (Monday 4/30). After that I saw my doc, we talked about what the plan for induction would be, and she wanted to check my cervix to give us an idea of how that might go. At first she said, 'closed, 50% effaced, and soft'. Then she shoved her finger in and said, "OK, 1cm".  And that, my friends, was the beginning of the end :)

When I got home after that, I hung out on the couch for a while playing a phone game, and noticed a few contractions somewhat more uncomfortable than I had been used to. I started timing them, but they were pretty inconsistent - some were five min apart, some fifteen. Got up after a while to do some stuff around the house and they went away. I continued to feel them intermittently during the day, mostly while sitting down, not so much while up and about.

In the evening, DH and I finished putting up the valances in Truffle's room, and then I cleared out all the boxes and other junk that was still in there.  After that I went downstairs and we started doing dishes and cleaning up.  A bit later than I had wanted to get to bed, but that's about par for the course.  I had been feeling some contractions here and there, but when I timed them they were still all over the place.  When we were almost done I was standing in the kitchen and felt a sharp pain in my cervix, which made me go "oooooooh", and then a big gush!  Classic!  If I hadn't been wearing a pad from the cervical exam there very well could have been a puddle on the floor.  It was enough to completely soak the maxi pad, as well as my undies, and a bit got on my pants.  Time was approximately 12:35am.

Well, that did it.  I immediatly started having contractions, timeable, lasting about 20 sec each with 1:45 in between.  I knew we needed to get to the hospital in relatively short order to get the antibiotics started for the GBS - plus we were hoping not to cut things quite as close as we had with Timmy.

Called my mom first to have her come over to stay with the kids, then my sis, who had wanted to be in the room when Truffle was born.  Unfortunately she had a raging sore throat and knew she had a cold coming on so not a good idea.  Made us both sad, I was looking forward to sharing the experience with her.  Finally, I called the baby hotline and let them know my water had broken, and they agreed we should come on in.

We got our toiletries together, packed the last few things we needed, got lunch ready for the kids to take to school the next day, walked my mom through everything she would need to know, and were in the car at 1:38.  Contractions were still 20-30sec long and 1:45 apart. (So the start of one ctx was 1:45 after the end of the previous one).  I was still able to easily walk and talk through them.

The car ride was much more calm than when T was born, when I was into transition.  I was texting and posting a couple of messages in between contractions, I did have to start to close my eyes and consciously relax through them, they had lengthened slightly to 30 sec, and about a minute thirty in between.  (contraction timer apps are so cool, especially to a data freak like me!)  We arrived at the hospital at 1:59am.

(Side note - I guess I was probably right when I was in labor with T that my ctx were 20-30 sec long and 2-3 min apart when I started really contracting.  I always wondered based on how quickly things went after that if I had mis-timed them, as I was just counting in my head.  Really does go to show that they don't always NEED to be a minute long to be doing something!)

To be continued...