Thursday, April 5, 2012

A Birth Story, part 1

The two weeks leading up to my due date I was fed up with being pregnant and anxiously waiting for Scarlett to arrive. I was so uncomfortable and couldn't sleep (Ha! As if I would get more sleep when I had a baby!), and I was sick of waddling around just waiting and knowing that it could be any day or three more weeks. Every night I would go to bed and think, "Maybe tonight's the night..." and every morning I would wake up disappointed and think, "Maybe today's the day..." Nope. The cycle continued. I also had a lot of irrational thoughts. "How will I know I'm in labor?" (Trust me, you'll know!), "What if I sleep through labor and wake up to the baby's head coming out??" (While we may have heard some crazy stories, I'm pretty sure for the majority of us there is absolutely NO WAY you could sleep through pain like that).
At my 39 week appointment my doctor asked me if I had any wishes to be induced. "No, I'd rather it happen naturally...but ask me again next week if I'm still here," I said, positive that I wouldn't be. The next week came. Even though we all know that it's an estimated date of delivery, it seems like such a let down when your due date comes and goes with no baby. At that point I was willing to talk induction. It was Thursday, and we scheduled the induction for the following Monday morning if she hadn't come by then.



My mom decided to go ahead and come down Friday night and stay the weekend so she would be here for sure if I was induced or if I went into labor over the weekend. She and my brother Cameron came down, and my sister Collier would come down the next day. Saturday morning Mark, Mom, Cameron, and I went to the home inspection of the house Mark and I were buying (we figured one major life event just wasn't enough), and I started feeling some tightening sensations. They were like stronger Braxton Hicks contractions that would come about every 20 minutes or so. After the inspection we went out for some lunch (which happened to be Mexican food - maybe that helped!), starting to get a little hopeful. Later that afternoon we decided to kill some time and hopefully kick things into gear by walking the mall. At that point the mini contractions started coming every 6-10 minutes, but they didn't hurt. When we got home, Collier had made it there and we sat down in the living room. All of the sudden the contractions started to hurt and started to get closer together. For some reason I was in denial that I was in labor. My mom kept saying I should go to the hospital (she had super fast labors and was afraid I would to), but I kept insisting that we wait like they told us until the contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute, for 1 hour. Mine quickly went from being around 10 minutes apart to 3 or 4 minutes apart, but they were only lasting about 30 seconds, and it had been less than 30 minutes. "Kara! You're in labor!" my mom assured me. They were starting to hurt worse now, like really bad menstrual cramps, and then quickly became 1-3 minutes apart. "OK, maybe we should call." As soon as I said it, my water broke.



Stay tuned for part 2...

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