Only 7.5 Months Late . . .

Gemma Grace's Birth Story! Part 1 . . .

signs in the triage room. interesting difference between the two!

After a few days of timing "hopefully-these-are-contractions," I was lying in bed with John on Sunday night, Dec. 5. It was a few days past my due date by my calculation, and nearly a week past by the standard calculation, and now I was getting a little anxious . . . anxious for our little girl to arrive while her Grandma was still in town. :-) I'd even told John that I felt like breaking my own water *just* so I could know for sure when it was real.

Well, on Sunday night shortly before falling asleep, I suddenly felt a little trickle. I leapt out and ran to the bathroom, saying, "I REALLY hope this baby comes soon because I think I'm losing control of my bladder!" John came in to help assess the situation, and we quickly decided that this was something totally different. "I think my water broke!" It was surreal--I called the midwife pager a minute later. It was around midnight.

The midwife on call called me back shortly, but took a laid-back approach to the whole thing. She advised me to lie down for an hour or so and get back up. If it was really my water, it would pool in that time and there would be more, she said. We took her advice and I went back to bed. John told me I should try to rest in case this was the real thing, but I was too excited to sleep! When the alarm went off, there wasn't any more, but we called her back anyway. I was sure it was my water because of the dark color, and I knew that dark water probably meant meconium. Because of that and because I was expecting to need a round of IV antibiotics due to being GBS+, we decided to go in. ("GBS" or Group B Strep is a bacteria common to women but bad for babies!) I think John was a little disappointed that he didn't get to make a dramatic drive to the hospital with his wife screaming for him to go faster. :-) All I had was some sporadic light cramping.

It felt like it took forever to park the car and sign in to the L&D unit! Finally I got set up in a triage room. The midwife confirmed that my membranes were ruptured, and I think she used the word "massively." I could have told her that. ;-) With ruptured membranes, I had up to 24 hours to see if labor would start on its own. Otherwise, they would induce me. Because of the GBS, they didn't check me for dilation yet, but since I hadn't been dilated more than a fingertip a few days earlier, induction would require a foley bulb to artificially start the dilation and an IV with Pitocin to start contractions.

Of course, as the midwife pointed out, 24 hours from now would be the middle of the night! It seemed we had three options: start the induction now (middle of the night), start in 24 hrs (also the middle of the night) or try to get some sleep and pick a time tomorrow to start. The third option seemed best to us, especially when she gave us some statistic about how 80% of women go into labor on their own within 16 hours of membrane rupture. When she told me that Meg, one of my favorite of the 6 midwives, would be coming on at 7 in the morning, I was quite thankful that the Lord should be so kind to us!

While we waited to be put in an actual room, John and I looked at each other in amazement. We're going to be parents . . . are we ready?!! We were also very tired, and by the time we settled in to our room, it was close to 3 a.m. I slept all right, considering that I was wearing the monitors the whole time, and woke probably around 7 a.m. when the shift changed and the new nurse came in to introduce herself. I appreciated that they changed out the EFM belts for wireless telemetry so I could move around. They also started me on some of my IV antibiotics, but set up the IV so that it could be easily detached (hep lock). Soon Meg came in as well to discuss our options.

Now, there is a more natural means of stimulating your body's own production of oxytocin, and I had written on my birth plan that if Pitocin was recommended, I'd like to try that first. However, when I went over my wishes with a different midwife a few weeks earlier, she'd told me that they wouldn't allow that because an IV drip of Pitocin is easier to control. I'd reconciled myself to her "rule," hoping it wouldn't come to that. However, when Meg read my birth plan, she said we were welcome to try our natural method and even gave us some tips! We decided to wait a few more hours before starting, and I took a shower and ate the full breakfast they brought me. Meg agreed to check back on us around noon.

Mom came in to visit around 10 or 11, and after she left, we started attempting our natural induction method. While we didn't have to do anything until midnight, I felt motivated to get things going before Meg came back at noon. And, to our excitement, the contractions started coming . . .