JJ's birth story (and pics)

meeshybee · November 2014

I had been having these odd pains on and off all day Monday. They felt nothing like contractions I've had with my other pregnancies so I ignored them, thinking they were just another discomfort that came with being so far along.

I went to bed at 8:30pm but was woken up at 10:30pm by these same strange pains, around 20-30 minutes apart. By 12:30am I couldn't think of anything they could be other than contractions so I started timing them. By 2am they were about 7 minutes apart and I had bloody show on the TP. Time to decide what to do.

At 3am I called DH (it was 4am his time) and we agreed that if it continued for another hour I would call my dad to help get the kids on the bus and take me to the hospital. By 4am, they had spaced back out to 10 minutes but I called my dad anyway. He called in to work, came over and helped me get the kids ready for school and on the bus. As soon as they left we headed to L&D, getting there about 6:45am. They confirmed they were definitely contractions and checked me (still 4cms). About an hour later they checked me again and I was 5cms. The nurse said "Yup, you're a keeper!" and I was admitted.

At 9am, we were trying to coordinate what would happen with the kids after school. FIL wanted to know what time I would be having the baby (he's clueless like that) and I put in a rough guesstimate of 3-4pm just to humor him. I got my epidural around the same time and only then did I feel the squeeze of the contractions instead of just pain.

By noon my contractions were starting to space back out again so they added pitocin to my IV and said that my doc may come by and break my water. The aby was still pretty high and they were hoping that would encourage her to move down. I was excited for that since breaking the water seemed to work very quickly with my last 2 labors. Finally at about 2:15pm a doc from my OB's practice, who was there for her own patient, came by to break my water for me. Twenty minutes later I said baby was definitely ready and they called my doc. Luckily, her office is 5 minutes from the hospital.

Two rounds of pushing later and JJ arrived at 3:11pm. My guess was right! As close to 8lbs as you can be without being 8lbs. 9/9 on her Apgars with extremely healthy lungs. She very heavily favors DD1 when she was a baby, so maybe I'll have another little beauty queen.

ETA: Pics are with DD2, the brand new big sister!