Daniel's birth story

I'm not usually one for sharing a lot of intimate details, but sometimes when the story is good enough you have to put aside the tiniest bit of modesty for the sake of the story.  Daniel's birthday is one we will be reliving for a long time.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

8:00 am - I put 2 dozen pumpkin muffins into the oven and turned my attention to Greg's much over-due haircut.  I had already had a couple of nice contractions and had two or three more over the course of the next hour, getting ready for church.  Could this be the day?

10:35 - The one and only contraction I had the entire 2 hours we were at church.  It was pretty mild; apparently things were slowing down.

1:15 pm - Laid down for a nap.  Contractions had picked back up about every 12 minutes or so while making and eating lunch.  Not long after laying down, they stopped, and I enjoyed a nice long Sunday afternoon nap.

5:30 pm - Back to church.  All contraction action had pretty much stopped.  Looked like today probably wasn't the day after all, but I had an appointment the next morning and was looking forward to seeing how the day's activity had progressed things.  I felt optimistic we'd be having a baby in a day or two.

8:30 pm - Saying bedtime prayers with the boys.  Had to breathe through one decent contraction, but it was in the middle of my turn praying and even Greg couldn't tell I had felt a thing.

10:30 pm - Went to bed having experienced 3 or 4 contractions since putting the boys to bed.  They were a good strength, but pretty far apart and irregular.  I expected that just like naptime earlier, they would stop all together once I settled in for the night.  My hopes were definitely up for a baby the next day, though.

10:55pm - I was just drifting off to sleep only to come back awake with a pretty painful contraction.  I practiced relaxing and breathing through that one.  If I was going to deliver a baby the next day I wanted to remind myself of my favorite relaxation techniques.  After that first one passed I had just about fallen asleep again when a second followed.  I checked the clock.  It had been 18 minutes.  But wow this one really hurt!  I figured I was going to have to do way better than this tomorrow if I was going to be able to relax my way through another natural labor!

I got another chance to practice about 15 minutes later.  Ahh... I had found my groove by now and was relaxing nicely through this one when.... *pop*. Splash.

Ohmyheck.  I gave greg a couple of hard elbows to the ribs to wake him up, but that wasn't necessary.  With my next words he was fully awake and on his feet.  "My water just broke."  It was 11:37.

He asked what we needed to do and I said "We need to GO.  Things are going to happen fast now that my water has broken." 

Greg immediately called mom and dad, mom to go with us and dad to stay with the kids.  I headed to the bathroom.  It just seemed the right thing to do.  Plus if I was going to be leaking fluid all the way to the hospital I wanted something absorbent, right?

However, once in the bathroom, the contractions were nonstop.  Looking back, I remember telling myself to blow through them, and not push, but in that moment it didn't occur to me that if I was telling myself to blow I must have also been feeling the urge to push!  I knelt for a moment in the floor and then decided to get into the shower.  Greg was checking on me constantly as he got our things into the van.  At one point he shushed me, concerned about waking up the kids, as I was groaning my way through the now extremely painful contractions.  

11:44 - Mom arrived to find Greg holding the shower head against my lower back and me holding my nightgown up out of the water.  He looked up at her and said, "We're not going to make it out of this house."

To be continued....

Part 2