A couple of days later, I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night thinking I wet the bed. Does that ever happen to adults who aren't pregnant women? Naturally, I went to the bathroom, but I still wasn't sure what happened, so I went back to the bed.
"Don?" I said softly.
Now the MoW is instantly awake since I used his name and not one of our many terms of endearment!
"I think my water broke!" A thing that has never happened in the history of my childbearing years! I hadn't had any contractions yet, so we decided to wait until morning to call the midwife. I think must have been 3:30 a.m. when all this started. No home birth was planned this time around as we were in Georgia where the laws are different and I wasn't comfortable with the options, yet I was not about to go to the hospital until I was having good labor.
Alas, that didn't happen. When we called the midwife in the morning she encouraged me to come to the hospital anyway because it was very likely that an infection caused my water to break 3 weeks early and I would require IV antibiotics. You know, "3 weeks early" is an interesting phrase. At 37 weeks, my old midwife Nancy would have delivered me at home, but I was 36 weeks and 6 days, where she would have required me to go to the hospital. At the hospital, they continually said I was 4 weeks premature. Interesting.
Contractions did eventually start, but stopped immediately upon arrival at the hospital. I cried because I didn't want to be there. Hospitals scare me! (I really want to change that to "scared", but I'm not sure I'm there yet!) We puttered along all day, gradually calming down and dilating more. Eventually, my very nice midwife was concerned that things were moving far to slowly and we should think about pitocin. Considering the fact that I'm an avid homebirther, I was less than thrilled about this option, but believe you me, we tried all the natural ways we could to get labor moving before I agreed to it! Nothing worked. I made my midwife promise to give me as little pitocin as possible. Just what was needed to get things moving.
She agreed. I forget the dear woman's name, but she said afterward that she gave me a tiny amount of pitocin, so small it's unheard of, and it worked! I could handle the contractions and she never needed to bump it up. Gosh, I think that it was around 7 p.m. when I got the "pit" and then things started happening.
I went from 3 to 8 pretty quickly, but I still wasn't there and it was getting hard. She checked me when I thought I was feeling an urge to push, but I was still just 8 cm. Wanting to make a visit to the bathroom, they helped me up and as my feet hit the floor I had a huge contraction and when I got there, I announced that the baby was coming!
Of course, they didn't believe me. 8cm to 10 cm in one contraction.
Of course, they wanted me to walk back to the bed when they saw I was right.
Of course, I said, uh, No, I'm staying here.
So, again, standing in the bathroom, I gave birth to my little Pipster. 7 lbs. 11 oz. at 4 weeks early (or is it 3?)
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I'm going to have to leave you there and finish the saga later. There's lots more to tell and I have a cake to frost before Mass!
from this point on when you hit 36 weeks it's a bedpan for you sister!!
ReplyDeletegood grief. 2 on the toilet's ENOUGH already!
;-)
actually 37 weeks is considered premature. 38-40 is full term. My oldest was a 37 weeker. next was 35, then 35+5days. and that's where I quit. Told hubby I'd raise as many kids as he wanted to bring into this family but he'd better find a DIFFERENT way to get them here!! and I mean it too.