Birth Story... Finally!

Here it is, finally, uncensored.

On Saturday November 14th, I went to bed about 9pm.

Sunday November 15th at midnight, my water breaking woke me up. I ran to the bathroom and luckily I was wearing a regular pad and not just a pantiliner, so I didn't get a bunch of fluid all over the bed. I sat on the toilet for a while because every time I stood up more would gush out. After a few minutes I figured ok this is really it (I didn't just pee myself) so I went and woke up Nick, who was sleeping in the guest bed.

"Honey, I think my water just broke!"
"No way!"

I went and sat on the toilet again and asked Nick to bring my phone so I could call the midwife (I knew my doc was not on call that night and had met with the midwives in advance so that one of them would deliver me in this case) and let her know. I had to laugh at myself because after all the preparing and planning and reading I had completely forgotten what to do! I called from the bathroom and was on the phone with Colleen when I had my first contraction at about 12:15am. She told me to time the contractions for an hour or two, and when they got between 3 and 5 minutes apart to call her back and we'd probably be ready to go to the hospital.

Nick got into bed with me and busted out his iphone with the contraction timer app. I'd tell him when a contraction started, breathe through it as best as I could, and then tell him when it was over. After only a few I could tell they were getting stronger and had Nick go get the exercise ball. I sat on the ball next to the bed and rocked my hips side to side like we learned in our childbirth class, but it didn't seem to make them much more bearable. After only a half hour of timing, the contractions were much stronger than I expected them to be, and the timer app had them at 2 1/2 minutes apart and lasting almost a minute! Nick called the midwife back to tell her what was going on.

"The contractions are already at 2 1/2 minutes apart!"
"Wow, she's not messing around, huh? Go ahead and head to the hospital, I'll meet you there!"

Nick ran to load up the car and got the dog's stuff ready, then called his mom to let her know we were going to the hospital and the dog would need a place to stay for a couple days!

OK this is really long... To be continued tomorrow.