This Texas Baby: The Birth Story - Part I

As time is quickly approaching 2 weeks since Sadie was born I figure I should get on writing down her birth story. I already find some details getting blurry in my memory, and that makes me sad, but I guess they are just being replaced everyday with even more amazing memories. Plus, things could be a little blurry from lack of sleep!

So, lets back up to the morning of Thursday, February 10th... I got up for work at my normal time, if not a little earlier. When I went to the restroom I noticed that I had some brownish orange mucusy discharge and thought that maybe it was part of my mucus plug. Which from all my reading, really meant nothing. Labor could still be 2 weeks away. All through getting ready for work I kept going to the restroom and noticing more and more discharge. Also, I was just starting to feel like something was going on, call it a precursor to mothers intuition or something, but I decided it might be a good idea to get my piles of hospital stuff more organized, which I am so glad I did! So, off to work I go. Once I got to work on used the restroom a few times I no longer noticed any of the mucusy discharge but decided I should call and let my doctor know anyways. When I called them and told them what was going on the nurse confirmed that it sounded like I was losing my mucus plug and to just keep an eye on things and let them know if anything else happened. Well at this point I noticed that I was soaking the panty liner I was wearing (I had been wearing panty liners for discharge for about 2 months or so). At first I thought maybe I has sneezed and peed myself a little and just didn't realize it, so I changed my liner and went on about my business all the while frantically trying to wrap as much work stuff up as I could! Around noon I walked to lunch with my friend and co-worker Melanie and I noticed I kept on feeling like I was leaking more and more. On our way back from lunch I expressed to her what was happening and she told me to call the doctor but I still held off! I just was not convinced that things were happening! Finally around 3:15 I called my doctors office again and told them I thought my water had broken and they told me to come over and get checked out. I stayed at work just a little bit longer, trying to finish things up, let my boss know I was going to the doctor to get checked but that I should be back later that afternoon, haha, that did not happen!

I got over to the doctors around 3:45 and got into a room and saw the doctor around 4. After telling her everything she said they were going to have me change and bring in a machine in to check and see if my water had broken. And now for the embarrassing part... as I am changing my clothes I leak all over the doctor's office floor, not like a gushing amount or anything but more than I was comfortable with! I tried to clean it all up with paper towels and then just sat on the table where I soaked the paper liner! When the doctor and nurse came in with the machine I told them what happened and the nurse had me lay back while she looked under my gown and said "oh, yep, your water definitely broke!" Haha, looking back it's all kind of funny. The doctor pushed the testing machine away and said "guess we wont need that!" She then did an internal exam on me and guess what!?! Still no dilation, no effacement and my cervix was still facing rear. She then told me that I needed to go on over to the hospital and get checked in. Is it bad that I asked if I could go back to work for a little bit? Her answer was no. She then told me that if nothing was happening with in the next two hours they were going to start me on pitocin. Since my water broke before noon we were working against that 24 hours to get you out in and if my body was not doing what it was supposed to be doing the pitocin would be necessary.

At this point you might be wondering where Robert was. Well, he was in Houston working. As soon as the doctor left the room, before I got dressed or anything I called him and our conservation went something like this:

R: Hey, what's up? (sounding very distracted)
M: You need to come home.
R: Huh? What? Why?
M: My water broke.
R: Oh! Ok, ok! I'm coming!

I later found out that he almost did not answer my call! It was right around 5 that I called him and he figured I was just calling him to say I was leaving work and heading home. So glad he did not ignore me!

As I am pulling into the hospital parking lot Robert calls me back and says that he is waiting on his co-workers to bring his truck back over to him and then he will be on his way. He got all packed up and out to the parking lot and realized he had let his co-workers borrow his truck to go work on another job. And also to say thanks for calling him to leave right at 5 during Houston rush hour!

You might also be asking why I did not call Robert earlier in the day to let him know what I thought might be going on. Well, I honestly did not think it was really going to be anything, at least not until I got to the doctors office. If I could go back and change one thing about those two days it would be to call your daddy sooner. It was super hard going to the hospital by myself and being alone for those few hours until he got there. (I wasn't really alone, Robert's mom and stepdad made it there around 6:30 and Melanie came by and brought my bags from the house and stayed for a little bit. But even though they were there it was just not the same as having Robert there. I can not tell you how relieved I was when he walked in the door!)

Ok, I think that is all I have in me today. Next time I'll go over what happened once I finally got to the hospital!

(So glad I copy all my posts before hitting publish! As soon as I hit publish it popped up with an error, would not of wanted to retype all this!)