Apparently, I have a knack for breaking my water at 2:00 am on a Sunday. Of course, this one didn’t create the same sense of urgency as the first one did.

As I told you last time, we were scheduled for induction on Monday (10/12). Well, true to form, our baby got impatient. There were signs all week that we were getting close. I think our children just like to give everyone a chance to gather. My mom flew in on Thursday, and my dad arrived on Friday. My preference was to go into labor on my own and avoid pitocin. My plan was to go natural, and it is my understanding that labor is more painful with pitocin (me and my big ideas). Once I knew dad was at least halfway, I started trying to coax the baby out. Mom and I ran some errands and went shopping. I had contractions but nothing consistent. On Saturday, I got out and walked the neighborhood a couple of times. Again, I had contractions, but they didn’t turn into anything productive. Over the course of those two days, I had moments that seemed promising, but they didn’t last.

We went to bed on Saturday night with a firm belief that we would be going all the way to Monday. With all of the anticipation that week, I was having trouble sleeping. I was awake every couple of hours or so. Saturday night was no exception. But at 2:00 am, my trip to the bathroom was a little different. I had a trickle that I was fairly certain was my water breaking. I wasn’t positive. It was a little different than with Mallory. I ate some applesauce, walked around for a little while and decided to go back to bed. I was up again around 3:30. This time, I decided to tell Johnathan. I was pulling my books out and reading, trying to determine if this was really it. We decided that we would wait a while to call the doctor since it wasn’t really an emergency…and she would probably appreciate the extra sleep. At 5:00, I was confident that my water was broken. Knowing that food would not be a possibility once I got to the hospital, I decided to eat. As long as I was vertical, there wasn’t much of a problem (apparently, the baby’s head acts like a cork). But when I laid down, my “output” got progressively worse. We finally called the doctor at about 6:45 (my doctor was not on call), and she told us to head in. We still didn’t get into a hurry. We both showered. Johnathan packed his bag, and I threw the last minute things into mine. We made the calls we needed to make and headed to the hospital around 8:00, where they finally confirmed that, indeed, my water had broken. This was it.

Unfortunately (for me and my big plans), I was not in active labor. They started the dreaded pitocin around 10:00. (sigh) With Mallory, we had a very wise teacher in our child birth classes. She took us through an exercise around birth plans. It gave us an understanding that, during child birth, you must remain flexible and reset expectations as you go. I had this idea in my head. You know, I would get to walk around. I would get to lean on Johnathan. He would be able to rub my back…and I was going to do this without meds (however, I reserved the right to change my mind at any point). Of course, none of this included having a room full of people during my labor. But if anything was the same with my first and second births, it was the audience. As I said, our babies like to give everyone a chance to attend their entrance into the world. It was actually a nice distraction in the beginning to have people to talk to. The nurse kept coming in and upping my pitocin. The first couple of times, she told me she was doing it. After a while, she would come in, check a few things, and leave. My audience kept pointing out that she had increased it again…they also kept pointing out that I had anothe contraction coming…and “Wow! That one was off the charts!” Yeah, like I couldn’t figure that out on my own. :) I also got periodic updates on how close together they were.

At around 3:00 (strictly guessing at times here), I had only progressed to 4 cm. My nurse told me that going from 4 to 5 took the longest, and that, in general, it takes half the time to go from 5 to 10 as it does to go from 4 to 5. That made me start paying attention to how long it was taking to get to 5…and calculating how much longer the process might take. Somewhere between 3:45 and 4:00, she checked me again, and I was still at 4. It was at this point that I was struggling to make a decision. The contractions were getting much stronger, but I was managing. However, I was either going to have to kick everyone out and send them to the waiting room, or I was going to have to suck it up and take the epidural. To some, this may sound like a ridiculous “dilemma”, but to me, it was really a hard choice. Just then, I had a pain for which there is no equal. It actually felt like something popped. I actually came up off the bed, gripping the rails and yelling, “OH, MY GOD!!” I can only imagine how big my eyes were when I looked at Johnathan and said, “I canNOT do that again! If that pain happens again, I absolutely will NOT survive it!!”…or something like that. “Get me the epidural.”

It took a few minutes for the nurse anethesist to get there. And then she had to get set up. All the while, I was having contractions on top of each other. I will admit that none were like the one that brought me up off the bed though. But the anticipation of that pain happening again was excrutiating in and of itself. (sort of like when a dentist numbs you and you’re not really sure that you’re numb, but you hear the drill, smell the smoke and clench up at the possibility that he might strike a nerve at any moment) I found that positioning myself for the epidural was difficult. The muscles in my back and abdomen were so sore that it was hard to lift my legs. Apparently, I did a fine job of hugging my pillow and breathing through the contractions because the epidural was fairly quick and quite successful…eventually. That all took less than 30 minutes. My nurse checked me again, and I was at 6 or 7. Five minutes later, I was at 9. Then, a few minutes later, it was time. On the third contraction, the doctor told me that the baby’s heartrate was dropping, and if the baby didn’t come out on that contraction, she was going to have to use suction. Apparently, that was incentive enough. Once the head was out, the doctor called timeout…literally. She let everyone know that we did not know what we were having and that Daddy was going to announce it. It was Calen! (pronounced like “Allen” with a “C”)

(This is getting really long, so I’ll cut it short from here and blog more later.)

We came home Tuesday afternoon. That was a really hard night. But since then, we have worked really hard on getting him up during the day to help him sleep during the night. It has worked well. For the most part, he lets us sleep for 3 hours at a time. He’s so sweet and content. He really only complains when hungry. And even then, it doesn’t last very long. Mallory is great with her baby brother. She wants to hold him and touch him and look at him. She hasn’t really shown any jealousy as far as having to share her parents with him. She reacts more to wanting to hold him rather than other people holding him. It’s crazy. I can’t believe we have two babies. I feel so blessed.