Saturday, August 3, 2013

Birth Story Part I: Labor

OK, so I really want to type up the boys' birth story before I forget all the details, but I am having such a hard time staying awake whenever I sit down at my computer.  So I'm going to try to get it out there in bits and pieces.

On Tuesday, July 30th, I went to work as normal.  My temp who has been hired to take over my job while I am gone had started the day before, so it was my second day of training her.  I had been averaging about 10 contractions a day for two or three weeks, so I found I was tending to ignore them when they popped up.  So one solution I had for this was just writing down whenever I had one, at least while at work.  I noticed that during work on Tuesday I had contractions that started up at around 11:00 am, and then I had one or two an hour from then on.  Then at around 5:00, while I was driving home from work and picking my daughter up from daycare, I had several - probably about 5 or 6 in the 45 minute period.  So once I got home I tried laying down on my left side and drinking lots of water.  The contractions continued to be about every 7-10 minutes apart for the next hour, so I texted around to some of my friends who had agreed to be "on call" for childcare for my daughter in case I had to go to the hospital.  My lovely friend M agreed to come over right away and help take care of my daughter until my husband got home from work, and stay over at our house with her that night if needed.

By the time my husband got home from work a little after 7:00, my contractions were every 3-5 minutes.  We ate dinner quickly and scrambled around packing things we would need for the hospital (I had not packed a bag yet).  During that time, my contractions stopped.  So, then we weren't sure what to do.  Eventually I had another one, so we decided to go in and get checked out to be safe.  I was afraid to go in too early for fear that they'd just go ahead and do a C-section because I was "far enough" along, but I didn't want to wait too long because my doctor had told me that it would be dangerous to labor too long and get a breech baby stuck in the birth canal.

We decided to go to the hospital just to be on the safe side, and I called my IPs and put them on high alert.  They decided they wanted to wait and make sure the babies were actually on their way before starting their 5 hour drive.  I got to the hospital at around 8:00 pm.  They hooked me up to contraction and heart rate monitors and checked my cervix for dilation.  I was dilated to a 2.  About an hour and a half later they checked me again.  Contractions had been regular, about every 5-10 minutes, but not particularly strong, and I was still dilated to a 2.  They decided to wait another hour and a half and check me again.  During this time, the contractions started petering out, and were more like every 10-20 minutes apart, still not particularly strong.  But when they checked me, they saw that I was now at a 3.  During the whole time they wouldn't even let me have water, because of the risk that I would need a C-section at any given time.

After discussing amongst themselves, they told me that they weren't convinced I was in labor, but they weren't convinced I wasn't.  So they didn't want to deliver the babies premature if they would be able to stay in longer, but they also didn't want to send me home for fear that I would go into active labor and not be able to make it back in time.  So, they decided they wanted to admit me overnight for observation.  They sent my husband home, and moved me out of the observation unit to a room with an actual bed.  I was allowed some snacks and water before I went to bed, which was around 1:00. 

I think I got about half an hour of sleep that night, when the contractions eased up.  Otherwise, I was up all night with fairly regular contractions.  At around 5:00 am, I was having contractions every 7-12 minutes that were definitely feeling stronger and more real. I asked to have my dilation checked again, and was told I was still at a 3.  So, back to more waiting.

At 6:30, room service opened up so I decided to order breakfast before I lost the chance to eat for the day.  As I was waiting for it to arrive, my doctor showed up.  He happened to be the on call doctor at the hospital that day anyway, and the staff let him know as soon as he arrived that his surrogacy patient had been there for about 10 hours.  He reviewed my chart, and then came to tell me that there was no point in waiting.  He wanted me to have a C-section within the next hour.  Right as he was telling me this, they brought my breakfast to my room, and he turned it away...sigh.

So I called my IPs at about 7:15am and told them to hit the road, it was baby day!

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