Sam's Birth Part 1

***I wrote this at the hospital on Saturday night but fell asleep and 3 days went by before I got back to it. I figured I'd better post this now and try to get the rest finished tonight.

The last few days have been surreal. So seeing as I'm pretty much bed bound and bored out of my mind here at the hospital I thought I'd seize this soon-to-be-extinct free time and try to put down the events that have just transpired in words. I'll try to make things non-rambling but I make no promises because the pain meds are kicking in right about....now.

Where to start? Let's see....Thursday morning I had my 37 weeks appointment. I thought it would be nothing but the usual heart beat check, tummy measuring, obligatory questions, and then out the door. As my midwife was measuring me, she noticed the heartbeat was very faint when she put the monitor on the lower part of my stomach. She told me this could mean baby was breech. She did manual exam of my cervix and found that a-I was dialated to a 2.5 and b-that she couldn't feel a head near the cervix. A quick check with an ultrasound machine revealed that baby was indeed breech, head sitting just under my ribs.

I was pretty worried, but she told me there were some things I could do between now and my next appoint to help move baby around. She said we'd wait a week to do anything and then check things again at my 38 week appointment. At that point, if he hadn't moved, they may have to change me over to the OBs at the clinic and talk about "options", which I knew meant cesarean.

I went home feeling a little worried but reassured that baby had a week at least to turn and that I had some time to get him to move. I was pretty surprised that I was dialated, seeing as with Eli I was induced at 41 weeks with almost no diatation. I spent the day doing normal things, cleaning the house, scrubbing the fridge, doing loads and loads of laundry; just usual household stuff. I called the midwives around 3pm with a few questions about my morning's appointment, mostly about breech-y things and felt tired but normal.

I did notice around then that I'd been having tons of Braxton-Hicks contractions all day, but didn't really note it because I'd been having these for months. I made dinner around 5 and we sat down as a little family to eat and talk about the day. I felt exhausted after we ate so Dan offered to run some errands with Eli while I stayed home and rested. In typical mom fashion I started cleaning up the kitchen as soon as he left. At this point I finally noticed that my BH contractions had been coming on pretty regularly. I remember reading somewhere that if they got regular or stronger, even if they didn't hurt, it could mean something was up.

I decided to just ring up the midwife on call and see what she said. I felt silly doing it...I knew nothing was going on. I spent a few minutes sitting and counting the contractions...3 in ten minutes. I called and Jen Krebs, the midwive on call, answered. I apologized for calling about Braxton Hicks but told her what was going on. She sounded more concerned that I thought she would and told me to lay down and not move for 30 minutes. She said I needed to track my BH contractions and call her as soon as 30 minutes were up. I thought it seemed a little silly, seeing as I still hadn't felt a single labor pain, but I said I would.

So I downloaded a contraction monitoring app (so cutting edge) and started timing them. After about 5 contractions I looked at the numbers and suddenly my brain hurt. Each lasted almost a minute to the second and were coming every 4-5 minutes. And they were coming like clockwork...almost 8 that I could count so far. I still wasn't feeling any of them so I was sure nothing was going on...but a little alarm went off in my head that somehow this pattern meant something.

I called Jen back and told her the numbers. She said I needed to go to the hospital right away. I was stunned. I asked if I could shower and wait to help put Eli to bed. She said no, because the baby was breech they really needed to check me out at the hospital in case I was in labor. I hung up and looked around the house. Things were a mess. No crib or bassinette was set up, we had no newborn diapers around, all the things I had been putting off were suddenly at the front of my brain. I couldn't go to the hospital, because babies are born at hospitals, and I was NOT ready to have a baby that soon.

At this point it occurred to me that Dan was not aware anything was going on. When he left I was just a tired, haggered looking pregnant woman but I hadn't said anything about contractions or whatnot.

***SAMMY'S BIRTH PART 2***