It's hard to know exactly where to start because I'm not sure when true labor really began. On Sunday night (the 9th) I woke up as usual to go to the bathroom, but this time I realized I was having contractions. They were maybe slightly stronger than normal, but nothing that I would call painful. In hopes that maybe this was the real thing, I stayed awake for a little while and began timing them, and they were consistently 10 minutes apart for 1-2 hours. At some point James woke up, and I told him what was going on, so he stayed awake with me for a little while, but since the contractions weren't getting any closer together, I decided it was best for me just to try to get some rest, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, the contractions had pretty much completely stopped, and I hardly noticed any throughout the day on Monday.
On Monday night we ate dinner with some friends and didn't get back home until sometime between 11 and midnight. While hanging out with them, I noticed contractions start back up again, and they were definitely stronger than the night before, but I was pretty easily able to ignore them. When we got home, though, I thought I should see how close they were, so we timed them for awhile, and they were mostly between 5 and 8 minutes apart. Once I was laying down in bed, they were getting to be somewhat painful (I would hardly call them painful now after having experienced true labor, but at the time I considered them painful), but since they weren't getting any closer together, I again decided I should just get some rest. After all, if it was truly the real thing, then they would get strong enough that I would wake up. Well, just like the previous morning, I woke up on Tuesday and they were pretty much completely gone. Bummer.
Then around 11:30 on Tuesday morning I began to notice contractions again. I figured it was probably false labor again, but I kind of kept an eye on the clock and noticed that they were consistently between 5 and 8 minutes apart again. The rest of the afternoon they were never more than 8 minutes apart, and by 3 or 4 they were significantly stronger. We were having friends over that evening (no, we don't usually hang out with people every night of the week, but I sure am thankful that it happened that way this week, because I definitely needed some distraction, since I was getting really impatient waiting for Jesse to come). While we were eating, my contractions were getting quite painful, though they weren't bad enough for me to say anything. I really didn't want to draw much attention to them, because I assumed that yet again, this was probably another joke.
However, we decided to play Balderdash after dinner, and after a couple rounds I had felt so many contractions that I thought it would be unwise not to see how far apart they were, so I somewhat discreetly began to time them on James' phone stopwatch and noticed that they were all less than five minutes apart, and quite a few were even 3 minutes apart. Probably a couple rounds later I was in enough pain that I couldn't stay seated during the contractions; I had to get up during them because I was so uncomfortable. At this point, I hadn't even told James how close together they were, but he picked up his phone and looked at all the times I had recorded and asked if we should be thinking about going to the hospital. I said that we probably should, especially since I had been experiencing regular contractions all day. Since our kitchen was quite a mess from all the dinner dishes, James and our friends picked it up as much as possible. They left soon after that, and we finished packing up random odds and ends and then immediately left for the hospital. By this point, I was having a bit of trouble doing anything during the contractions.
We got to the hospital around 7:45 on Tuesday night. The nurses in the ER determined that I was 3 cm dilated and 100% effaced (at my last doctor's appointment, a week earlier, I was 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced, so not much had really changed), so it was still unclear whether or not they were going to admit me to the hospital. They decided to monitor me for an hour and see whether or not anything had changed. After an hour I was still about the same, so they let me get up and walk around the building for an hour to see if this would speed things up. Contractions were increasingly painful by this point, and I could no longer walk through them. I kept thinking how awful it would be if they decided to send me home. Thankfully, after an hour of walking around, I was dilated to 4 cm and the doctor gave the OK for me to be admitted. Yay!
It was probably around 11 pm or maybe even closer to midnight when the decision was made for me to be admitted, but we waited until nearly 2:30 am to actually be taken to our room (we got the last available room that night, but it still had to be cleaned). And let me tell you, the ER is one of the most awful places in the world, especially when you spend 6+ hours there. Think bright lights, teeny tiny "rooms" divided by curtains, and having to wait 45 minutes just to get a cup of ice. At this point I was offered an epidural and other kinds of pain relief, but it was my goal to make it through the labor medication-free, so I continually refused. (I didn't have any particularly strong conviction to go all-natural, but I knew it was the safest/healthiest option for both me and the baby, so I wanted to give it my best shot).
When 2:30 am came, they finally wheeled me off to our labor/delivery suite (I wasn't allowed to walk at this point because they thought my water had broken--it actually hadn't) , which was very calm and relaxing compared to our little stall in the ER. I felt like I was in a nice hotel room. I continued to labor in there for hours, but by about 10 am I had only progressed to 6 or 7 cm (and I had been at a 6 or 7 for several hours by that point), so our doctor strongly recommended to either 1) get an epidural because this might help me to relax, which could, in turn, speed up the labor, or 2) get started on pitocin to speed things up. He said that my labor could go on and on for hours and hours otherwise.
Well, by then I was hurting so bad that I decided to go with this advice. Since there was no way I was going to take pitocin without some pain relief, I decided to get the epidural followed by the pitocin. Unfortunately, I had to wait nearly an hour to get the epidural because the anesthesiologist was in an operation. That was possibly one of the longest and most painful hours of my life. I had made it through the contractions pretty well up until this point, but somehow knowing that pain relief was coming, it made them nearly unbearable. Boy was I ever thankful when that anesthesiologist came in the room and began to stab me in the back with big needles. James, on the other hand, did not react so well to this procedure. Apparently the combination of what the anesthesiologist was doing to my back and the intense contraction that I experienced while he was giving me the epidural, was enough to make James turn ghost-white and nearly pass out. (As a side note, I made him promise not to pass out during my labor, because I knew I would think he was going into diabetic shock). Luckily he managed to get through it without passing out or vomiting, and since he had just recently checked his blood sugar, I was fairly positive that it was not diabetes-related.
After receiving the epidural and the pitocin, I felt totally relaxed and relieved. I thought it would be wise to try and get a nap in at this point, but I was in such a happy state that I couldn't even "focus" on sleeping. Now all I could feel during the contractions was some pressure. After an hour or so, however, the pressure got really intense. It was nothing like the pain I had experienced earlier, but it was just extremely uncomfortable (to be blunt, it felt like I had to go to the bathroom really bad but couldn't). I told the nurse next time she came in, around 1:00 pm) and she said it was probably time to start pushing. She checked, and sure enough I was at 10 cm and ready to push. After alerting the nursery staff and the doctor on call, I began to push and about 30 minutes later, Jesse was born! After seeing him, I couldn't really remember what the pain and discomfort felt like--I was just so happy to finally be meeting my son. He began crying pretty soon after he came out, and I got to hold him while James cut the umbilical cord. They took him away for a few minutes to do all the newborn assessments, but we soon got him back and enjoyed having in the room with us for the next 2 or so hours until they had to take him to the nursery to get him all cleaned up.
Here we are about an hour after his birth.
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