My birth story kinda starts on Wednesday, August 11. I thought I had a high rupture of my membranes and had leaking amniotic fluid. I decided to go to the hospital that night around 10 PM and get the fluid checked out. My husband and I were there for two hours and after testing the fluid the doctors concluded that I had NOT ruptured my membranes. When we finally got home and in bed it was about 1 in the morning on Thursday, August 12.
On Thursday I was so tired that when I finally woke up I went to the bathroom and then went straight back to bed. As I turned over a little I noticed a little trickle of dampness that I thought was just a little bit of urine that leaked, so I turned more to grab some tissue off my nightstand. As I grabbed the tissue I had a huge gush of fluid. That time I KNEW that my water had broken!
Of course, I called everyone and went straight to the hospital. I drove myself to the hospital (Andy had gone to work with his dad so his dad drove him to the hospital, since it was almost directly in the middle of our house and the job DH was working on) and I got to triage at about 12. I sat around triage for a couple of hours just waiting for a room to be cleaned and opened up and for everything to get settled. I didn’t actually start having noticeable contractions (IE early labor) until 5 PM, but once that hit, things really went pretty quickly. When contractions started hurting I got into a Jacuzzi tub to relax. That helped for about 5 contractions (which were steady at 2-3 minutes apart and getting stronger) then I felt like it wasn’t helping and I was done hurting so I got some Nubain and relaxed again for a few minutes. When I got the nubain I was 5 CM dilated. By the time I was allowed to get more drugs (the epidural I was craving!!) I had progressed to 8-9 cm dilated! Not much longer after that I was dilated to 10 with a small amount of cervix left. My nurse told me to call her when I felt like I really needed to push, so I followed her instructions and at about 2:00 AM I had to push. I pushed for an hour and a half and Rex Arthur was born at 3:25 AM on Friday the 13th! Overall my real labor was about 10 ½ hours long from when I first started feeling contractions to the time Rex was born.
He was 8 pounds 6.3 ounces and 20 inches long. He was a big boy, and I have a sustained a tad bit of damage because of it, but it was so worth it. He is the sweetest little thing a person could ask for.
