I had already been “phoning it in” at work for a couple of weeks, partly because I was expecting Baby J to arrive at any moment, but mostly because it was just getting too darned difficult to move around. I felt huge, heavy, unwieldy, and all other synonyms of “large” you can think of. Mostly I was sitting on the couch watching reruns of Law and Order until it was time for naps. Except for random Braxton-Hicks-type contractions several times a day, which were painless, this pregnancy was exactly where it should be at 38 weeks.
Photo from: http://www.totalfitnessexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pregnant-belly.jpg
On one of these weekday mornings the contractions suddenly felt painful, very painful! I was groaning in pain, holding my belly, and kneeling on the floor waiting for each wave to subside. Time to alert the husband to take me to the pre-delivery room at Medical City, where I was going to give birth. This was a first pregnancy, so I had absolutely no idea what contractions would feel like and how to know when I was supposed to go to the hospital. We texted the doctor and he said just go and get checked. When we got there, I was hooked up, checked, poked, and put on standby. Wouldn’t you know it, contractions stopped when I was there. Feeling silly for pressing the play button too soon, we were discharged and sent home with instructions from the doctor to come back only when contractions were 15 minutes apart and coming in regularly.
After the false alarm my husband, my giant belly and I went out to lunch with friends, hung around the house, I may have even gone to the mall to walk around. In the early evening the painful contractions started again and this time we know enough to actually time them.
You know how some women who give birth say they have a high tolerance for pain? Well, this one has a very low tolerance for pain. I was squeezing B’s hand, twisting and writhing in pain with each wave of contraction. At 10pm, we went back to pre-delivery room. There they waited and waited and waited, contractions were very irregular but very painful. Internal exams show I was dilated 1cm, that’s nothing! That’s a polite way of saying “honey you are so not ready yet but i’ll say 1cm so you don’t feel stupid for taking up our time.” Baby J hasn’t dropped into my pelvis, he wasn’t going anywhere. Still, since I was in so much pain the residents probably took pity on me and got me ready to move to the delivery room.
Brilliant tip from our OB, book the Lamaze room, the best room and you don’t actually have to use Lamaze techniques to give birth. It was huge, had a couch, a tv, its own bathroom and enough floor space to do a Zumba class for 6 people. Sure it was windowless, but it had an entire wall covered with a mural of a pretty garden of flowers! I had my Kindle, my ipod, my phone, and my husband, I was ready for the wait. So we waited, and waited, and waited. 12 midnight became 4am which became 11am and became 6pm. This baby was not dropping! There were long stretches of time with no contractions, then some contractions close together, then they’d disappear again. Poor intern had to sit there half-asleep recording all my contractions.
Photo from: http://www.mommylace.com/2010/02/21/cost-of-giving-birth-normal-and-ceasarian-delivery/
I don’t remember exactly when I asked for an epidural, it was probably halfway through my labor. My OBs resident asked me if I was in pain and I enthusiastically said hellz-yeah I’m in frickin’ pain! At this point I sheepishly asked when I can get pain killers to which she replied “ anytime you ask for it ma’am!” See, if they had explained this to me when they admitted me then I could’ve asked for it 6 hours earlier and I wouldn’t be so exhausted.
There were all manner of unpleasantness during this period of labor which I will warn all you out there about in a following post.
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