< Part 3 (Ready! Set! Wait!) / Part 5 (Are We There Yet?) >

Recap:
M dropped Tuesday night, keeping me up until 1:30 AM
Contractions started Wednesday morning at 5:30 AM
(Four hours of sleep on Tuesday night)

Contractions started and stopped all day Wednesday
Contractions all night Wednesday night, estimated at every 20 minutes (slept between contractions)

By Thursday morning – after a night of much interrupted sleep – I was mostly just getting really annoyed. As previously mentioned, I had been sleeping in a recliner for many months. It had proven to be far more comfortable than our bed, but it was not serving me so well now. The farther I reclined the chair, the more the contractions hurt, so I was sleeping in an essentially upright position. I was uncomfortable, and sleeping in 20 minute intervals was far from rejuvenating. At 8 AM I threw in the towel and decided to get up. I’m guessing I was in the chair for maybe 8 hours, but with regular contractions so it’s hard to say how much sleep I got. We’ll be generous, and say 6 hours – although 6 hours in 20 minute intervals is a hell of a lot different than 6 solid hours of sleep. I decided to get in the hot tub – if the contractions kept coming, then I knew we were on a roll. But by the time the tub heated up and I ate some breakfast, they had again tapered off to being almost non-existent. I sent R to work.

I talked to Gloria, and she thought M was probably in a bad position. She said this type of labor pattern (start, stop, start, stop) usually meant the baby was posterior. We agreed that she would come see me in the afternoon to check. Most of the time I could tell how M was sitting, but my uterus was so hard I hadn’t been having any luck. M’s typical position was with her back to my left side. She moved around, but usually returned to that spot. The ideal position was halfway between that spot and her back to my belly. So her favorite spot (if she was still there) at least put her reasonably close to where she needed to be.

Gloria arrived around 1:30 PM and listened to her heartbeat … strong at 140. However, she felt M had now rotated almost completely posterior (her back to my back). Despite all my efforts when she was active and dropping, I had failed to keep her out of a posterior position. This was very disappointing.

From her external palpation, Gloria also guessed that M was sitting at about the zero station, which was good and bad. Good because she was nice and low, and close to where she needed to be for pushing to be effective. Bad because the lower she was, the harder it would be to get her out of my pelvis to turn her anterior.

So Gloria gave me some pulsatilla (a homeopathic remedy that is supposed to help babies turn), and prescribed the knee-chest position (to lift her out of my pelvis), followed by lots of hands and knees (to get her to turn).

The one bit of good news was that I wasn’t having back labor, and with M posterior and sitting so low, Gloria thought I’d already be feeling it if that was going to be a problem. I’d always dreaded back labor – as if contractions weren’t bad enough, the thought of not having a rest between them scared the shit out of me. There had been several tearful incidents over the fact that sleeping in the recliner was likely to make M posterior. I felt so stuck, because I couldn’t bear the pain of lying in the bed, but I was terrified of back labor. Did I want to suffer through months of hip pain, or hours (days?) of excruciating labor? So it was quite a relief to learn that back labor was looking more and more unlikely. Gloria speculated that my pelvis was roomy enough to accommodate M in a posterior position without applying the pressure to my spine that makes things so excruciating. For the first time in my life (but not the last!), I was glad I had big hips. Still, being posterior likely meant a longer labor and longer/harder pushing. And if Gloria was correct, it was also the cause of the start/stop nonsense.

After she left, I dosed myself regularly with the pulsatilla. I don’t know if I believed in it or not, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I also spent as much time as I could tolerate in the knee-chest position (which wasn’t much). For those of you who don’t know what this is, imagine a huge pregnant woman down on her knees, with her nose on the ground, and her giant pregnant ass waving around in the air. Pleasant, no? This was followed by the downward dog position, leaning on the birth ball, and 40 minutes of scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees (note to self: don’t ever again buy a house with white tile and white grout in the kitchen). I couldn’t tell for sure, but I was fairly certain my efforts were for naught. On the plus side, all of that activity produced a few contractions and I lost a fairly sizable chunk of mucous plug (that’s a pleasant picture, isn’t it?).

At that point, I didn’t quite know what to think. I couldn’t help wondering if my emotional state, or some latent fears about labor or becoming a parent were somehow interfering with things. It was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid R’s brother and parents, and I’d suffered through several phone calls with family members where I had to pretend I wasn’t having contractions. I was really wishing that things would just get moving.

When R got home, we decided to go out for a bite to eat. I vacillated a little about what to order, thinking this might be my last real meal before having M – and potentially what I would be pooping out on the delivery table. Everyone says you don’t really care about that part when the time comes, but I still couldn’t help thinking about it. So, should the meal be light or hearty? I finally decided I was hungry, and to just eat what sounded good to me (a big ole plate of pasta). I even had dessert, and it was delicious. I was having regular contractions every 10 or 15 minutes, but they weren’t too intense. I would just stop talking so I could relax and breathe deeply through them. I kept hoping someone would ask when I was due so I could say I was in labor, but sadly it didn’t happen (for once). We had a pleasant meal, and returned home.

I talked to Gloria again, and it turned out she was at a pre-natal fairly close to our house. Since I’d been having contractions on and off for 2 days, and with regularity for 4 or 5 hours, she decided to stop by and check me to get an idea of how serious things were getting. After the check I received disappointing news – I was (marginally) fingertip dilated and 50% effaced (same effacement as at my checkup 3 weeks prior). With my permission, she continued the check during a contraction, and said M’s head was not pushing down, so there was no pressure on my cervix to make it efface. She made an official diagnosis of “prodromal labor”. It was all I could do to fight back the tears until she left. I was well aware that prodromal labor could go on for many days, and the lack of substantial cervical change (especially with respect to effacement) had me really discouraged. All those many (admittedly not too strong) contractions were having essentially no effect. Gloria advised me that the most important thing at this point was to get rest. There was no telling how many days (and nights) I might be looking at, and she was worried I’d be exhausted when “real” labor finally started. She said if the contractions kept me awake that I could have a glass of wine, which should relax me and slow them down enough for me to sleep. I nodded numbly, and Rich saw her to the door. I was devastated and incredibly discouraged.

I tried to sleep soon after Gloria left, but two contractions in the recliner had me jumping to my feet. I didn’t want to open the only bottle of wine I had in the house, so I had 2 shots of vodka in the hopes it would settle things down. It did not, and I could not get comfortable or sleep. Feeling increasingly frustrated, I logged onto my pregnancy board to vent and hopefully find some encouragement. Several other mamas were also in the early stages of labor, and we were keeping close tabs on each other. The kind words and encouragement were much needed, but I just wanted to be out of this holding pattern. And dammit, I was tired.

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)