Carter's Birth- Part 1

Our baby boy’s due date was on Friday, January 11^th. I had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, January  9^th at 1pm. For that appointment I dropped Kylie off at preschool and took Kipton over to a friend's to play so I could go to my appointment. I had only marginal progress from the week before and was 70% effaced and a little more than fingertip dilated. The appointment went smoothly and my doctor gently massaged/stripped my membranes hoping to help start my labor going. It didn’t hurt and she told me it gave us about a 50% chance of going into labor in the next 72 hours. 

That evening after making dinner I finished putting some caulk between the tub and vapor barrier as we were working on finishing the basement. I remember having really strong nesting instincts that night. I cleaned the house, vacuumed and finished adding a few things to my hospital bag. I also made sure the children’s suitcase was packed and ready to go. I remember thinking that it would be a good time to go into labor since everything was ready. About ten or eleven pm that night I noticed I was having a few light contractions. They weren’t strong or happening very close together. I was curious if they were considered “false labor” as they would go away if I changed positions and they weren’t timed very close. On the other hand they were enough that I had a strong hunch they would turn into more than that during the middle of the night. It was unfortunate that it was so late because we hadn’t warned anybody to expect a call in the middle of the night if necessary. Jared sent a quick text to my sister late that night but we didn’t anticipate her seeing it.  

Jared fell asleep on the couch and at about 1am I decided to get into the tub. The hot water felt really nice and helped take away the pain of the contractions. I also expected it to slow down my progress as it had with Kipton’s birth. I’d spend an hour or so in the hot bath and when I’d get tired I’d go lay on my bed in a towel and would try to sleep as best as I could until a contraction would wake me up. When they got too difficult I’d take another hot bath. This repeated a few times and I had hot water continually trickling into the tub most the night. I was relaxing in the bath as best as I could but it wasn’t really possible to sleep in there. I remember being really tired. It seemed like around 6 am I recognized that my contractions were getting much more painful. At the time I felt like they were about 8-10 minutes apart but only lasted 20 seconds or so. I felt like they weren’t getting closer together but they were sure increasing in intensity. Looking back I wonder what the true reality was as Jared was still in the other room and I didn’t have a clock near me. I just knew at a certain point that the intensity was there and we needed to get going to the hospital. 

About 6:30 am or shortly after I got out of the tub and was trying to dry off and get dressed when Jared heard me. He jumped into the shower and noticed that I had several contractions while he was in the shower, much closer than the ten minutes I was telling him about. He essentially cut his shower short and decided we needed to get to the hospital quickly. He made some last minute calls to my sister to let her know I was in labor and to head over to our house. Because of how long Kipton’s labor was we hadn’t really thought about getting a last minute plan for who would watch our children if we went into labor in the middle of the night. I was having some excruciating intense contractions by then. The contractions went very quickly from manageable to being excruciating. Poor Jared was running around trying to help me, get the bags into the car and calling our neighbor Becky to come over at the spur of the moment and watch the kids until my sister Vaylene could get there. While Jared was in a hurried rush making phone calls and taking bags out to the car I had a contraction next to my bed where water started running down my legs and I knew for certain my water had broke.  At this point both Kylie and Kipton woke up during all the commotion but stayed out of the way. I’m sure they were concerned about what was going on. Jared helped me into the front seat of the SUV and unlocked the front door for Becky. I remember asking if Becky was there yet and she wasn’t. By that point I was on my hands and knees in the front of our SUV, in severe, severe pain. I told Jared we couldn’t wait any longer- we HAD to leave. We left and Jared called Becky’s cell to tell her that we had left and she told him she was on her way out the door.  

Part 2 here