I’ve been meaning to type this up, but having a tiny spidermonkey constantly attached to you makes it difficult to get things done. Who knew? Anyway, I thought it was important to have a record of Cooper’s birth story written down before it all becomes an epidural-induced haze. So here you go:
Saturday, September 27, 2008
I’ve had an easy pregnancy, but my hubris has started to catch up with me. In the last month, I started to develop stretch marks, and my September 23 due date has come and gone. This week has been the most difficult of my entire pregnancy; I’m near hysterics all the time and have begun to believe that I am going to be pregnant for the rest of my life. I literally cannot imagine a time when my belly won’t stick out two feet in front of me, or a time in which I will actually have a baby. This all just seems like a cruel joke.
I’ve been having pretty strong Braxton-Hicks contractions since Thursday, but I refuse to get my hopes up. However, as I’m going to bed, I start to feel dull menstrual-like cramps. They’re mildly annoying at first, but they get to the point that they actually wake me up a few times during the night. I start to think I may be in labor, but the cramps are very far apart, so I just try to get more sleep.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
I wake up at around 7 am. Since I had such trouble sleeping the night before, this means that I’ve only gotten about 5 hours of sleep. I feel something weird, so I go to the bathroom. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that I just lost my mucus plug. I try to stop myself from getting excited, and go back to my room where Luke is still sleeping. I look in the Mayo Guide and on the internet and discover that while losing your mucus plug could very well mean that you’re going into labor, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should get to the hospital, as the baby could still be days away. I hate everything.
I continue to search on the internet, trying to find something that says, “Kona Gallagher: your baby is on his way. Get Luke up and go to the hospital, now.”
I do not find anything that says this.
Around 9 or so, Luke wakes up and asks what I’m doing. I tell him not to get too excited, but there’s a chance I may be in labor. He asks me how far apart my contractions are and I tell him between 8 and 11 minutes. He is not impressed. We both start our days.
I’m still not trying to get too excited, but I’m timing my contractions on contractionmaster.com and trying to will them to get closer together. As you may or may not know, the general rule of thumb is that contractions have to be four minutes apart, last for a minute and continue for at least an hour (4-1-1) before it’s time to call the doctor. My contractions were doing the 1 and the 1, but weren’t anywhere close to the 4. Still, I figured it would be a good idea to kind of prepare–so I started scrubbing out the tub.
I wasn’t planning on having some sort of awkward hippie home-birth or anything. I just wanted to make sure that the house was clean for when family came, so I scrubbed and vacuumed and Swiffered my little heart out.
I also thought it would be important to prepare for the actual hospital stay itself, in which I probably wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep much, so I made myself breakfast and took a nap. After my nap, I was craving curly fries like whoa, so I tried to convince Luke to take me somewhere to get them.
It was during this conversation that I mentioned that in addition to my contractions, I’ve been leaking. Now, discharge after losing your mucus plug is normal (the internet told me so) but this seemed watery. I thought there was a chance my water had not broken, but sprung a leak.
Luke told me to call the doctor.
