Our Labor Story

On Wednesday, January 29, my school nurse sent me home from work informing me that I needed to change my doctor's appointment to earlier in the day and get there ASAP... she felt like I was going to have Miss Rylie soon. I was able to change my appointment from the afternoon to late morning and get home to pack my hospital bag before going... I was a little freaked out that I wasn't ready for this, my bag wasn't packed, the carseat not installed in my car, snacks and drinks weren't bought, my parents weren't on their way or here, the dogs weren't at the kennel nor had I made reservations for the dogs at the kennel!

Needless to say, the OB that checked me reassured me that I didn't need to freak out that I wasn't going to have the baby that day... or that weekend... she felt confident that she would see me at my 39 week appointment the next week... so... I debated with my parents on whether or not they needed to drop what they were doing right then and there and head out to Colorado that day or not and I came home to rest and finish my sub plans.

Bump Shot on Wednesday, Jan 29

Finishing my sub plans (or at least attempting to) was a good thing because on Thursday morning about 3:00 I woke up to back to back contractions making it uncomfortable to sleep so I moved to the guest bedroom to not disturb Ian. About 4:00 I casually woke Ian up to let him know that he might need to take me to the hospital because my contractions were 1-2 minutes apart and were ranging from 90 seconds to 2 minutes long and had been for at least an hour. At 4:45 I decided to call my parents and tell them they needed to get here ASAP because I was confident I was going to have the baby soon. For some ungodly reason I thought it was HIGHLY important to take a bath and shave my legs about 7:00... (Which for all you pregnant ladies out there, a warm bath will make braxton hicks contractions slow down or stop but will increase real contractions... and shaving while having contractions isn't recommended... especially if you are as "graceful" as me) I managed to climb out of our deep soaker tub and wake Ian up about 8:00 before calling the doctor's office for triage. I was given permission to head into the hospital by 8:15 but told I probably didn't need to rush... Ian took "not rushing" to a whole new level... we FINALLY left for the hospital about 10:00 and got there by 10:30.

The admitting nurse, "Z", was super sweet and nice. I really liked her. She checked me shortly after we got to the hospital and I was already dilated to a 5... by noon I was a 7... the anesthesiologist (pardon my spelling) was called in to insert my IV port since the nurses were struggling due to my water retention. He asked me if I wanted any pain medication. I told him I wanted to wait until I was at least dilated to a 7-8 before getting an epidural and that I would rather have IV pain meds for as long as I could handle it... that was when we realized I was already a 7! I got the epidural while he was in the room. Life was dandy after that!

My Colorado best friend came up to the hospital with her 6 week old to sit with me while Ian dealt with the dogs. When he returned about 4:00 Z checked me again and I had already progressed to a 9! She said that I was doing a good job. Ian went to get food in the food court and while he was gone my water broke. Z told me that I should let me body "do the work" for as long as I could because it would make my "active labor" or the pushing process easier on me later. So what did I do? Since I was already on my side I took a nap and slept through the contractions!

About 5:45 Z came in and told me that they were going to be placing me on an antibiotic in my IV since my pulse had been rather erratic and my temperature had spiked over 100 after my water broke, they were concerned that I had an infection commonly known as "chorio". This meant that Rylie and I would need 2 more rounds of antiobiotics over the next 24 hours. I was in agreement to the treatment since I didn't want to risk actually having the infection and harming Rylie.