Baby Is Here! (Part 1)

Saturday, March 2nd was the local chocolate festival. It was yummy! Then my mom and I ran walked around and did some errands at Target and a couple other places. That evening, Mike's parents came over for dinner. We headed down to an Italian place in HdG. I had some tummy issues throughout the day, but nothing terrible. Enough to put the thought in the back of my mind that maybe my body was getting ready! A few days earlier, Tuesday, I thought I had the stomach bug so I stayed home from school. I never got sick, but I had to lay really still or I got dizzy and gross like being carsick. Some people say that's a sign of your body getting ready too, but with all the sickness at school who knows. ANYWAY. I ate a regular sized dinner and then had a giant piece of chocolate cake for dessert while everyone else watched. It was good.

When we got home, Mike's parents stayed for awhile and then they left. Then my mom went to bed and Mike was playing on the computer so I sat on the couch and played on the computer and read a book. Since my mom had been coming to school with me for 3 days, it was the first time since Tuesday I had been alone with nothing to do. I stayed up til 1am which is incredibly unusual for me, especially during pregnancy. Most of the time I went to bed around 9 even on the weekends. I remember having one cramp, not even really as strong as the contractions I was having 10 days ago at the dr's office. Definitely not anything that made me believe labor was imminent.

At 3:30am, I partially woke up and noticed my hips hurt. This isn't new because they've been hurting for months. I had PT on Friday so at first I thought we just did something during my weekly adjustment. But then, it HURT. And then a few minutes later they hurt again. I got up and walked around, trying to get my blood pumping. I kept an eye on the clock and realized the pain was coming just about every 5 minutes. I wasn't noticing any cramping, any tightness in my stomach, or anything like that so at first I completely dismissed the idea that it could be labor. But since the pain was coming in waves with totally fine moments in between, I started getting suspicious. Supposedly if it's fake labor or braxton hicks, changing your activity should change the feeling or pattern. So I paced and walked and at some point woke up Mike to let him know what was going on. Then I took a shower to see if that helped, because that often helps with my pain. It didn't make a difference, and the pain started getting worse. Instead of just being "yowee - that isn't right" it started becoming "my hips are going to separate from my body!" 

I remembered from baby class that if the baby was pointing a certain direction, it would cause back labor. I didn't feel like this was in my back, more in my hips, but hired Mike to push my hips together every time the pain happened. It didn't make it go away, but it made it slightly better less agonizing. At one point I tried bouncing on Mike's exercise ball but that wasn't really helping either. Although it did help me get through a phone conversation with the doctor. I decided to call the doctor at 4:30 and get his opinion. He thought that since I didn't have any stomach pain or cramps, it was probably just early labor. Luckily he gave me permission to come in and get checked if it got worse. Just in case, Mike grabbed some things that we couldn't pre-pack because we use them frequently. We both had clothes and stuff packed but I had a list on top of the bag with things like phone charger, iPad, camera, etc. At some point we woke my mom up and she came down, but I sent her back upstairs because I didn't want to yell and scream in front of everyone. The cat was all out of sorts, so I guess he figured something wasn't right too. (Plus it was almost 5am at this point, and we were downstairs, so he thought it was breakfast time!)

I think I made it another half hour before I decided that we needed to go to the hospital. Even if it wasn't labor, I was hoping they could help me out or help me relax because I was in so much pain. It probably only took us 10 minutes to get to the front door of L&D, but that was a long 10 minutes. I had 3 waves of pain in the car, so they were pretty close together by then. When we got buzzed in, I was very very thankful that I had been in triage a few weeks ago because I was already in the system and they only needed my SSN to get me a room. Two nurses saw me through the door and came out to get me while I was huffing and puffing. They checked me and poof - I was 7 centimeters so I knew we were going to stay!