I've been thinking a lot about labor lately since Liz has been talking about it in her blog. The big question is when will she know she's going into labor. Someone left a comment on her most recent post that said that she will know when it is the calm before the storm.
Now, I consider myself to be an intuitive person. Yoga has made me aware of any changes going on within my body. I felt Sweet Pea move weeks before most primigravidas do. I am generally an exceptionally sensitive person. However, to this day I can't tell you exactly when I went into labor. I don't feel like I was not in labor one moment and in labor the next. I think it would be more accurate to talk about labor as something that happened in the final week of my pregnancy, not final day. That epiphany, that instant realization, that "Ah, it is finally happening" moment never came. I never felt like, OK, the clock starts now. NOW I am officially in labor.
When I hear women tell stories about how long they were in labor I want to ask, how did you know? When you say you were in labor for 50 hours, what
stages of labor are you including? Are you including early first stage labor? How long were you in active labor? How long were you in second stage labor?
I had a lot of practice labor, contractions getting increasingly stronger and more frequent in the last week of pregnancy, but on the afternoon of Saturday, April 14 the contractions changed. They became a lot more intense and for the first time painful rather than just uncomfortable. I started to time them with the
contraction master. I'd feel the contractions mostly in my lower back. Sometimes I'd have them every ten to fifteen minutes for several hours and sometimes I'd go an hour without having one. I called Sweet Pea's father to tell him that something might be happening, but he wasn't answering his phone. That night I was able to sleep, but I'd wake up every hour or so with a painful contraction.
Sunday, April 15 was a lot of the same. Contractions no less frequently than every half hour but sometimes as often as every five minutes. The midwives had told me not to come in until I was having contractions lasting at least a minute every five minutes for at least an hour. There were several times on Sunday that I almost made that criteria, but then my contractions would slow down for an hour or two. My baby daddy finally called and I told him he might want to come over because I thought something was happening sooner rather than later. We went out for Mexican food at the the closest Mexican Food restaurant because I felt like it might be my last pre-mommy dinner. We had the most incompetent, stoner waiter ever and I wanted to scream, just bring me my queso - I'm in labor over here! The contractions were making me nauseated so we ate outside because I couldn't stand the way the restaurant smelled. I would eat a few bites, then lean forward for a contraction. Eat a few more bites, then have another contraction. I'm sure the people at the restaurant probably thought I was a crazy woman. Unless they were with it, in which case, it was probably pretty obvious that I was in labor.
Sunday night I didn't sleep because my contractions were never any slower than every 30 minutes and were often a lot more frequent. At one point they were more frequent than every five minutes, but then they'd slow down again. I think that most reasonable women would have called their midwife or OB by this point, but I was committed to laboring at home as long as possible. I knew that many c-sections occur because of failure to progress so I wanted to show up at the birthing center as late as possible to avoid this diagnosis.
Monday morning, April 16, I was already pretty tired. I'd slept fitfully on Saturday night and not at all on Sunday night. Monday morning and early afternoon was the same as Saturday and Sunday, with the contractions getting stronger and I was experiencing more back pain. By Monday afternoon the back pain was getting so intense that I was having some trouble standing up. It was when I had to call Baby Daddy to ask for help out of the bathtub that he said that he wanted me to go to the birthing center. I said it wasn't time yet, but if he wanted he could call them. He called, told them what was going on and they said they wanted me to come in right away.
I was already so tired I was hoping that they would tell me that I could go home and come back the next day so I could try to get some sleep. The midwife, Jean, examined me and determined that I was dilated to 6 centimeters. As she was examining me she was saying, "Oh wow, your cervix feels terrific. It's really soft. I bet your water is going to break while I'm examining you." As she said it I felt a gush of liquid. She gave me a pad for the fluid and sent me out to the parking lot to walk around to try to get my contractions regular. "You'll be having this baby by midnight," she said.
That, of course, did not happen. I would like to write my birth story again now that some time has passed and I've been able to process the situation from a little bit of distance. I've spoken with the midwives about Sweet Pea's birth, have done more reading and now have a bit more clarity than I did before. I have a different perspective now.
But I was just going to respond to the comment that you'll know when it's going to happen. I've always had trouble limiting the scope of my writing. Bottom line, I didn't see it coming and I didn't ever know for sure it was happening. If I were to do it again, maybe I'd know or maybe I wouldn't. No wisdom here. I'm just throwing spaghetti against the wall.
