Will my next be this quick?
I think I was in such shock when I delivered my son, I hardly believed it myself. Now with the impending birth of my second child, I am scared I will make it to the hospital. My OB doesn't really seem too bothered, even though he does say in all his years of delivering babies, I was one of the fastest he has ever seen.
I had been put on bedrest after a bleeding episode at 34 weeks with DS it was discovered that I was 2-3 cm and 80% eff. At 37 weeks, I was pulled off of bed rest and decided to take advantage and get some meals frozen and clean my house. At 37 wk 4 ds, I was doing some house work and my mom came over to help around 3 pm. At 4 pm she commented that I kept holding my stomach, I told her the baby was stretching. After another half hour, she didn't believe me and felt my stomach which was rock hard. I agreed to start timing, but insisted they weren't getting more intense and they didn't hurt. After DH got home, my dad joined us and we got dinner and went for a walk. After dinner contractions had slowed from every 5-6 min to every 8-9 minutes. I sent everyone home, assuming it was false labor and sent everyone home. We went to bed at 9:30 pm on September 30th and before going to sleep, I turned to my husband and said "Well, we made it to October."
At 10:30 pm, I had just fallen asleep when I bolted out of bed when my water broke. DH got everything into the car and we got to the hospital around 10:50. By this time I was really starting to feel "painful" contractions. Our paper work got lost so it took us 10 minutes to get checked in at OB triage. Once I got back in the room, my contractions were on top of each other and I was in a lot of pain. I sent DH out of the room twice to get a nurse and she sent him back in. I guess she refused to believe a FTM was that far along. I then started to bang on the wall while lying in the bed and moaning "Help....HELP..." The nurse came in shortly after 11 and begrudgingly checked me. She turned around, picked up the phone and ordered someone to call my doctor to get here "stat" cause he has a patient who is complete.....WHAT?
My mom and MIL got there and then my doctor arrived about 11:40, when I started pushing. DS was out in 3 pushes and was born at 11:42.
My concern is that since STM tend to have faster labors than their first, I won't make it to the hospital and if I do, I surely won't be able to wait 40 minutes for the doctor to show up. I have been instructed to head to the hospital as soon as my contractions are timable.
Oh, well....we shall see
Re: Will my next be this quick?
It's funny because all anyone ever tells you is "Your a FTM, your labor is going to take hours." And you beleive it to, until all of a sudden your contractions are bad and you need to push. It's crazy and I know most women's birth stories are not like that, but some women's are. I think the best indicator is to see what our own mother's births were like. My mom too didn't think she was really in labor at first and said it didn't really hurt til the very end when it was almost time to push.
I guess we are lucky, however those last contractions come so fast and furious, you don't really have time to recover and forget about any medication or pain releif (which was fine by me). But I always tell mom's that want an epidural my story and that JUST IN CASE they are like me, they should be prepared to go without.
You are correct in that I had dialated quite a bit before I went into labor. It was caught after a bleeding incident at 34 weeks, hence the bed rest. I didn't start timing contractions til about 4:30 and my water broke at 10:30, so it was more like 6 hours. But it wasn't even that the "pain" became unbearable. There was no pain til my water broke. I was convinced it was false labor and went to bed. I have heard that typically 2nd labors go faster and that is my concern. But you are right, every labor is different.