Posted by Laura Vellema on February 22, 2012

Labor? My Birth Story: Part One

You will deliver your baby around the same gestation your mother delivered you. This was an old wives tale I wanted to believe. When I was 33 weeks pregnant, I drove back home to the Chicago area to visit my mom.  She was throwing me a baby shower. The night before the shower she and I dug out the baby book she kept throughout my childhood to look up the details of her labor and delivery with me. My mom delivered me at 37 weeks and four days after her water broke, she went to the hospital and labored less than four hours.  I was her second child and I’m on my first, but apparently the story with her first was quite similar. Her story sounded pretty ideal to me, so I embraced the you-will-deliver-like-your-mother theory.

I had 37 weeks and four days marked on the calendar. Well, not literally, but I knew exactly when that day would arrive in my pregnancy and I started nesting frantically at about 35 weeks, accordingly. First, I stockpiled baked goods in the freezer followed by casseroles. I cleaned rarely touched places in the house and cleaned the car as if I were an auto detailer. The nesting culminated with an exhausting 10 hours of carpet shampooing.

But 37 weeks and four days passed. Two days later, however, I started having frequent contractions. Compared to the several random Braxton Hicks I’d had each day since about 20 weeks, these seemed like they could be the beginning of the real deal at 5, 10 or 20 minutes apart. I called my dad, a perinatologist, to ask him what he thought. He gave me a 50/50 possibility that this was the start of real labor and I was hopeful. This was two days before Christmas.

There were lots of festivities and friends visiting from out of town. The frequent, stronger, but not yet painful contractions continued and timing my contractions became sort of a party game. At the family Christmas celebration, my husband Neal’s 4 younger siblings even squabbled over who would have the timer and who would write down the time between contractions.

Unfortunately, these early contractions never seemed to really get organized and make us confident it was show time. All the days we thought might be neat to have our baby on came and went—Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Great-Grandpa’s birthday which was also New Years Eve, New Years Day, January 4 (I was born on March 4 and Neal on May 4). We were getting annoyed. I tried all the labor-starting techniques I knew of: drinking red raspberry leaf tea, bouncing on an exercise ball and walking. We had sex probably close to once a day—something that hadn’t happened since our honeymoon. And it seemed that all these things really did bring on more contractions, but they still weren’t regular or convincing.

On January 6th, a Friday, I had an appointment with my obstetrician. Earlier when I had scheduled that appointment, I was convinced I wouldn’t need it because I wouldn’t still be pregnant then. But I was… I was hopeful when the doc reported I was 1 centimeter dilated. After the exam, she told me that she wasn’t able to strip my membranes because she couldn’t quite reach high enough. I was a little surprised she didn’t ask me if I wanted my membranes stripped. I wanted everything to proceed naturally. But I did feel a tad disappointed, too, because at that point I just wanted labor to get going!

My doctor gave me a rundown of her post-term protocol. First, she said she hoped I’d deliver in the next few days. If not, she would see me again in a week. If the pregnancy lingered into week 41, I would have to come in every couple of days for tests and she wouldn’t let me stay pregnant past 42 weeks. She ended saying that, in her mind, any day after my due date was fair game for a scheduled induction. Then, she added the hook, “I’m on call Monday, if you’d like to schedule an induction then.” It was tempting. I really like my OB and there are 14 OBs in her practice that might possibly be there for my delivery. But, I was still hoping for a totally natural birth for my baby.

As I considered the options, I was torn. The doctor and hospital were both an hour and a half away (read my post “Where to Give Birth” for more details on that). Worst-case scenario, I would make the trip to see the doctor in a week and then several times in the next week, only to finally be induced at 42 weeks. I would spend countless hours driving, which was uncomfortable, and spend a couple hundred dollars on gas, which we couldn’t really afford on our shoestring budget. My gut feeling was that I only wanted to make the trip to the hospital once more and drive home with Baby in his car seat. If I went into labor in the next few days, great. If not, the day my doctor wanted to see me again, I would schedule an induction. My doctor seemed satisfied with this plan, so we scheduled the induction for the next Friday, which I seriously hoped I would not need.

Two days later, my due date came—January 8. And then it happened: Contractions strong enough to wake me from my sleep. It was 4:30am. As I lay in bed, I started timing my contractions with the Itzbeen timer I had gotten—three and four minutes apart. I got up, went to the bathroom, and was delighted to find a tiny blood spot—bloody show, I thought. Today was the day. I was going to be one of the 4 percent of women to deliver on her due date!

Or was I? Stay tuned for the rest of my birth story!

2 Comments »

1. That is really attention-grabbing, You are a very skilled blogger. I’ve joined your feed and stay up for searching for extra of your wonderful post. Also, I have shared your web site in my social networks

   Comment by custom birthday invitations — February 29, 2012 @ 1:57 am

2. Can’t wait!

   Comment by Rachel — March 1, 2012 @ 1:39 pm

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