How far along? 37 weeks
October 15th marked my last day of work before going on maternity leave. I thought 2 weeks before my due date that it was about time to take off work and come to recognize that I am actually going to have a baby. I was looking forward to taking a couple weeks of just bonding with my belly or the being in my belly before she arrived. Simon and I had planned a party for the same night. A "Pool Party" where we would play some mini pool and everyone could join into the pool to guess when our little bundle would be born.
That day at work I had my first Braxton Hicks contractions...quite a few actually. I joked with the shop owner that it was a good thing it was my last day because I was starting to feel contractions.
Our party commenced and people marked their names on the pool calendar. I had a couple more Braxton Hicks contractions during the party...people joked...are you sure they are only Braxton Hicks? I said absolutely...they don't really feel like much.
1:30am The last of our guests leave. Simon and I went to bed pretty much right away- I was tired from a long day in a increasingly larger body. I said to Simon It's funny that I haven't had any Braxton Hicks (BH) contractions at all during pregnancy and today I get quite a few. The doula who ran our prenatal class said that they would feel like a minor cramp low in the abdomen...exactly what I was feeling. As we were climbing into bed I had my 3rd BH and realized that it was happening at a regular interval (12 minutes). We consulted a book called "Becoming Baby Wise" as I had remembered reading in it the previous night about signs of pre-labour vs. signs of labour. Simon and I looked at each other sort of disbelieving when it seemed that my symptoms were looking more like labour signs. Huhn. So we went to sleep not really believing.
3:00am Whoa. What was that? A much stronger feeling in the lower abdomen...MUCH STRONGER! I'm just gonna wait and see what happens before telling Simon.
3:36 I wrote the time on a piece of paper because I realized Simon. I think I'm in labour.
Every time I felt, what I was now acknowledging as, a contraction I had to get up. I went into the bathroom to "wait" it out. Waiting it out for me meant leaning on the counter and walking forward and backward (kinda hard to describe-sorry)or sitting on the toilet. At one of these toilet moments I figured I had better try and contact my friend Andrea who had agreed to be there for the birth to help out. She had mentioned that she might head down to Seattle for the weekend but that she would let me know for sure. I hadn't heard anything from her so I thought maybe, just maybe (fingers crossed) that she didn't go. From the toilet I called feeling badly for the hour (about 3:30am) and left a message. I decided to go to her Facebook page to see if she had any updates...sure enough 2 and 1/2 hours prior..."signing out from Seattle". Crap! What now?
Labour continued like this and my contractions rapidly went to 6 minutes apart. I decided I was tired so I lay down on the bed and tried to nap between contractions.
Somehow I managed to slow the frequency of those pesky abdominal pains down to about 12 minutes and I gotta say I was kinda disappointed because...well, I figured I had just prolonged my whole labour experience. Drat!
Simon "napped" with me and with each contraction I insisted he keep track of and tell me how long it had been since the last...I HAD TO KNOW!
Things started to speed up again and it finally was a reasonable time to make a phone call to my friend, Susan, who has been the friend closest to me throughout the pregnancy. Good morning, Susan. (8:30am) I know it's early but I just thought I'd give you a call between contractions. silence
and then "Are you serious?" Yup "Soooo...what's your intuition telling you? When do you think you'll go into labour?"
Susan! I AM in LABOUR! Okay, gotta go- another one's coming on.
