The Story...

I thought I'd take a minute to write down the events of Daniel's birthday while they are still fresh in my mind. I woke up at 5:30am with some strong contractions, which were about 12 minutes apart. I called the midwife to see if she was on call, which she wasn't. So I knew the doctor would be delivering me if this was in fact "the day." By 6:30 everyone was up, and I made some coffee and started some laundry, mostly just to distract myself from getting too excited, in case it ended up being a false alarm.

Kathryn woke up a little before 8:00, and we ate a leisurely breakfast. After walking around our neighborhood a few times, I called Jeanie at around 9:00 to say this might be "it." I walked around the neighborhood a few more times, until my contractions were getting more like 5-8 minutes apart. Around 10:00 I called Nick,who was at work, to see if he could come and walk with me, and that it looked like this might be the real thing. The funny thing was, though, that every time I stopped walking, the contractions would stop.

Not wanting to make the same mistake that we did for Kathryn of waiting too long to go to the hospital, we headed off at 11:00 to find somewhere closer to the hospital to walk around. After walking around the hospital complex a few times, we went inside so I could see if I had progressed at all- this was around 1:00. This was all very calm and uneventful, since the contractions were very manageable and still stopping every time I stopped walking. And they were anywhere from 3 minutes to 12 minutes apart. The nurse at the hospital checked me, and I was still 4 cm, which is what I had been at my doctor's appointment the day before...a little discouraging that 7 hours of contractions had done nothing. She hooked me up to the monitor, which showed pretty weak contractions, and I thought about asking the doctor if I could have a little bit of pitocin to jump start things. At around 3:30, the nurse had me sign some paperwork "in case I ended up staying," since we still weren't sure if I was really in labor; my contractions were staying consistent as long as I was walking around and getting slightly more uncomfortable. I kept pacing around the hospital room while Mom and Nick were watching HGTV, and all of this was pretty uneventful.

My doctor came in between 4 and 4:30, at which point he said I was almost 7 cm! He broke my water, at which point the contractions started coming on stronger and quicker. I don't think I really let myself think that I was in labor for sure until this point, at which I started getting very excited- this was the day! Probably around 4:45 or 5:00 I was feeling like I really wanted an epidural...I remember asking my mom how long it would take to get an epidural, and she replied that the baby would be born before they could get there! And sure enough, Daniel arrived at 5:21.

All in all, this is a much less exciting story than Kathryn's birth, and I think I prefer the more calm approach over the frantic one.