The prelude – Thursday Oct 26-Saturday Oct 28

I’m going to post my birth story in 3 parts over the next few days. It’s pretty long and overly detailed, but it was therapeutic to write it, so indulge me.

I was ready. So very ready to have my baby in my arms and not be pregnant anymore. But I didn’t want to be disappointed so every time I even thought that I might have the baby early, I made myself also consider the worst case scenario — that I could go 10 days PAST my due date. (The horror!).

And, so I approached my weekly doctor’s appointment on Thursday with little hope for good news. I even told Ian not to bother coming because I was so sure it was going to be a 3-minute peak at my closed up cervix. Well, it was a 3-minute cervix peek-a-boo, but at the end of it, my doctor told me I was 3 centimeters dilated, 80% effaced and my cervix was low. The doctor was excited, almost giddy, saying all indications were that I was going to have a good labor. While I was picking my jaw up off the floor and considering the fact that I’d been walking around with my cervix one third of the way ready for a baby to emerge from it, the doctor told me she was going to strip my membranes and it might hurt a bit. Before I even had time to question it, she had done the deed. I called Ian from the taxi on my way back to work with the update. He was so excited and absolutely sure that we were going to have the baby this weekend. He told me he might be late at work because he was going to stay until everything was done – just in case. I started to feel the optimism too, though I wasn’t yet ready to allow myself to think it was REALLY time. But, maybe it was time.

When I got back to work I googled ‘membrane stripping’ and found out that 50% of women go into labor within 48 hours of getting stripped.  From this point on, I felt like a walking time bomb – tick tock – just waiting for some sign that labor was starting. Every twitch of my stomach was a possible contraction. I carried around a change of clothes just in case my water broke.

Friday afternoon I felt my first real signs of labor. I was in a meeting and started feeling some mild cramping. I started writing down the times I felt this sensation, not sure if it was contractions or not.  The times were remarkably predictable – every 15 minutes on the dot. Contractions! This had to be it. I continued to time them throughout the meeting – how hard to concentrate when I had this HUGE secret going on inside of me. After the meeting I went for a walk to see if the contractions would continue. Yup.  I walked down to my favorite eyebrow threading place since I might not be back to get my eyebrows threaded for awhile (priorities – right?)

Back to work – I had one more meeting then I was going to get things in order – send emails with contact info, organize my files, etc. – just in case.  But, near the end of this meeting, we started smelling a foul sulphur odor like someone was setting off fireworks in the air conditioning vent. Upon further investigation, there was also smoke coming out the air conditioning closet next to my office, so I grabbed my bag and coat then hightailed it out there. The entire office was evacuated and we convened at Starbucks to wait for the fire department. After some time, we were sent home because they needed to spend more time figuring out what was leaking and why. Somewhere in all this excitement , I “lost” my contractions. Or, more likely they were scared out of me. And I never got a chance to get work things in order.

Later that night I “found” the contractions. Again, they were every 15 minutes. We timed them for 4 hours.  They didn’t get any closer or any stronger. Following advice from our childbirth class, we realized this probably wasn’t the real thing and so I had a glass of wine to help me sleep and then put myself to bed.

Saturday I woke up and waited. Where were those contractions? Come back contractions. I felt nothing all morning. We went for a walk – still nothing. So, I decided to go to the prenatal yoga class that my doula, Trish, teaches. As I was getting ready and made my last bathroom break before heading out the door, I discovered that I had lost my mucus plug! Given my highly detailed google searches earlier in the day about signs of labor, I knew this was another one of those signs that could mean labor is imminent or it could be 2 weeks away. So, I continued onward to yoga sans plug and told Trish about the latest development. She immediately called a sub to be on standby for her Sunday classes. Like Ian, she felt “it” was imminent. I still wasn’t convinced. And so I did my downward dogs and wondered what exactly was going on inside of me.

Saturday night we waited some more. We ate dinner at home and watched a movie. No contractions. Every once in a while I wrote down a time when I felt a twitch in case it was the start of contractions. But nothing consistent.  I suggested going for a walk to try to get things going. It was a spooky night – the wind was howling and people were out in their costumes going to Halloween parties. We walked a few blocks then decided to go to bed early since nothing was happening on this night. Or was it?