< Part 2 (Warming Up) / Part 4 (Ready! Set! Wait Some More!) >

As you’ll recall, we left off with M dropping lower in my pelvis, and me drifting off to sleep at 1:30 AM, certain it would be a goodly while (as in a week or more) before labor started. That was Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning, contractions started at 5:30 AM. As usual, I have to be different. Surprisingly, what I’d read about contractions was actually correct – they felt like really strong menstrual cramps. (In the beginning at least.) It started with a sensation in my cervix, then radiated upward around my uterus with a tightening and cramping feeling. Not exactly pleasant, but not unbearable either. I was exhausted and determined to get more sleep, but found the contractions to be frequent and strong enough that this wasn’t possible. Around 6:30 AM I finally got up and leaned on the birth ball for a while. I was excited at this development, but very, very tired (we’ll start counting hours of sleep now: 4). I wanted sleep more than anything, but it was not to be.

At 7:30 AM I woke R. I lay in the bed briefly, but that didn’t help. Clearly, something was going on, but we couldn’t decide how serious it was. The contractions were coming pretty rapidly (often 5 minutes apart), and lasting 30-40 seconds. But I could easily talk through them, so I was pretty sure things couldn’t be that serious. Still, should he stay home from work? He got in the shower at 8 AM, and I called Gloria. She said things sounded promising, but I should try getting in the bathtub. If the contractions persisted while in the tub, then it was likely the “real thing”. By the time Rich got out of the shower, I was struggling a little (ha! ha! ha! – that’s “hindsight S” laughing), and decided I wanted him to stay home. He started heating the hot tub, and I started packing my bag (finally!). I figured I would just wait for the hot tub to heat up (less than 2 hours, as indicated by our trial runs) instead of bothering with the bathtub. I was really excited. Was I going to meet my baby today? Around 9 AM, I sat down at the computer and logged onto my pregnancy forum. I was afraid to believe this was real, but couldn’t resist the desire to let some people know what was going on. But as I was typing, I could feel the contractions starting to fade away. I felt like I was shining a light on a shy animal, and it slowly retreated back into its cave. By 9:30 AM, the contractions had subsided to few and far between. At 11:30 AM, I told R to go to work. I continued to have contractions sporadically throughout the day, but there was no established pattern to them, and they didn’t increase in frequency or strength. I did, however, have some bleeding, which is indicative of “cervical change”, so at least something was going on. By the end of the day, I was also getting little bits of what had to be my mucous plug – another good sign. I talked to Gloria several times, and we joked that things would surely start picking up in the middle of the night. We agreed that if the contractions came back at 5 minutes apart, I should call her – regardless of the time of night, or strength of contractions.

One other thing I want to mention. I was determined that none of my family be at the hospital while I gave birth (and I certainly didn’t want them at my house while I was laboring). As I’ve mentioned before, my mother is crazy and I didn’t want her anywhere near me. She has no sense of boundaries or me as an individual, and the last thing I needed in my space during labor was someone who wouldn’t respect me or my choices. My in-laws are great, but I still felt that I would want a lot of privacy. I’d read too many stories of labor stalling because the woman felt like a spotlight was on her, and everyone was standing around tapping their feet. I’d had many discussions with R, and we had agreed that no one would be told when I went into labor. I didn’t want the phone ringing off the hook with people asking how things were going, and was the baby here yet? I wanted to be left in peace to do what I needed to do, without having to think of a bunch of people anxiously waiting for me to FINISH. With R and Gloria around, I knew I’d have plenty of support. My mother had twisted my arm, trying to get me to “promise” I would call when I went into labor. I evaded this, and told her I didn’t know when I would call. She was less than pleased. My mother-in-law had mentioned to other people (but not me), that she would like to be present in the room while I gave birth. Although I was aware of her wishes (conveyed to me by others), because she chose to be passive-aggressive instead of discussing it with me outright, I didn’t think it was my job to bring it up with her. So she hadn’t been told one way or the other what our plans were. And now that contractions were starting, we had to keep everything under wraps.

This proved to be challenging for a variety of reasons. First of all, I was really excited that labor was starting, and even though I knew it was best not to, I still wanted to spread the news. It took a lot of self-control to not do that. Even harder, though, was the fact that R’s brother was in town, and all of a sudden we had to make excuses for not getting together. While I was certainly physically capable of being out and about at that point, there was no way I could hide that I was having contractions. So things started getting a little dicey, and I had to tell a few white lies.

Beyond that, I spent the day at my house, with the windows wide open, enjoying the unusually pleasant weather, excitedly wondering when things were going to really get moving. I went to bed around midnight, certain we would be getting somewhere by the next morning. I had contractions all night long – strong enough to wake me up, although I slept in between them. I wasn’t sure how far apart they were, though, because I’m blind as a bat and couldn’t see the clock without my glasses. But they didn’t seem strong or frequent enough to warrant a call to Gloria. So I dozed off and on through the night, having maybe 3 contractions an hour. Surely, the baby would arrive on Thursday. Right?

Part 1 (Preparation)
Part 2 (Warming Up)
Part 3 (Ready! Set! Wait!)
Part 4 (Ready! Set! Wait Some More!)
Part 5 (Are We There Yet?)
Part 6 (I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I can)
Part 7 (A New Life Begins)
Part 8 (Epilogue, For Me)
Part 9 (Epilogue, for my daughter)