I've decided to break Hope's birth story into 3 posts because well...it took that long for the story to be complete. I hope I don't stir up too much anticipation --haha. Please enjoy the first installment of our thrilling tale!
I hate to say it, but the memory is already fading. I wanted to remember every detail, but even if I squinch my eyes real tight, I simply can't remember it all. Unfortunately, that is what happens when you wait until 2 weeks postpartum to write your birth story. I did not intentionally wait this long, but as Providence would have it, I ended up with an upper respiratory infection (almost bronchitis) and a bout with some low iron only a few days postpartum and it incapacitated me for nearly a week. So, now that I'm feeling more normal (what IS normal?) I will do my best to recount our truly amazing experience.
I woke up around 6am on Friday, July 13th. I was on the couch because frankly, that is where I spent the last two months of my pregnancy. As I was laying there I felt not quite a pop, but as if something had "leaked" out of me. I thought for a moment if maybe I hadn't lost my mucous plug and then it dawned on me that maybe my water broke. I got up to go to the bathroom and went I bent over there was a definite trickle of something. Yep. Water broke. I went to the bedroom to change my clothes and told The Mad Monk what had happened. He asked me how long I thought we had and I told him I didn't know seeing that I wasn't in labor. I then called our midwife, Ann and let her know. She told me labor could start within a few hours.
I was laying on the couch a few hours later talking with my mother-in-law on the phone. I laughed about something and once again felt another little gush of something. At that moment, Liver Pie had asked me for something and when I went to get up to get it, I had an all out gush of water. I'm talkin' Niagara Falls! Needless to say, I got off the phone! This would be the first of about 6 of these gushes. I changed clothes several times that day.
The Mad Monk and I decided to go to his mom's house after a little while. She was closer to the birth center and since it was Friday, we were concerned that if something happened during rush hour, we could run into problems. Like, uh...birthing in the van. After staying at her house for a couple of hours (during which I had 3 more huge gushes. So big, she had to wash my clothes!) we decided we were going to go home. I called Ann to let her know and asked her since we were in the area if Dr. Cindy might be able to adjust my back since I was having trouble with my right hip (Dr. Cindy was the pregnancy chiropractor I wrote about in the previous post). Dr. Cindy told us to come on in and she was going to check the baby while we were there. By this time I had lost so much water that I looked only 7 months pregnant! It was the weirdest thing. She adjusted me and told me the baby was engaged in the pelvis and looking fine. She also gave me these adult Depend style diaper thingys to wear for my gushing problem. Let me just say, I have a new appreciation for my 4 yr old's Pull-Ups. We then went home to wait.
It was around 4pm when we got home. We hadn't seen the girls all day so it was nice to just sit and relax with them. Ann called around 8:45 pm asking if anything was happening, to which I of course responded with a big, fat... nope. She suggested going for a walk and so we did. The walk was nice. The girls thoroughly enjoyed it, but as far as labor was concerned, still nothing. So, with nothing else to do...we went to bed with the anticipation of being awakened in the middle of the night with rock hard contractions. Or so we thought.
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