Wow, it has been since February! Well, let me give you some updates, I finished my last trimester of prerequisites in April for my IBCLC, Mr. Wonderful spent a week in Colombia, we moved apartments, bought a house, and had a baby.
So life was a little crazy and stepped away from a few things so I could keep a bit of sanity. I promise to tell more details of the whirlwind 2017 was for us. First, because many are asking, here is the story I know a few of you are waiting for.
Many of you know how Mr. Z’s birth went, and for those of you that don’t, let me summarize it. Crazy. Fast. For a first birth, it was the fastest most of the hospital staff had seen. No one was prepared.
Baby Boy Teare, as he was know for almost his first 24 hours, was not like his brother’s birth at all. Around week 28, I started to get fairly good contractions. One night, they were consistent enough, that with our history of Mr. Z’s birth, we decided to go into Labor and Delivery. Four extremely uncomfortable hours later, I was allowed to no longer be strapped to monitors and to go home, NOT in labor.
No one was able to decide what was going on, and so I decided to mostly just ignore them. For the next 9 weeks if I was too active, walked too far, stood too long, twisted wrong, I would get a few contractions and would therefore, have to do a lot of resting.
Now, you would think with all the contractions that I was having we would have been ready for an early baby, but no. Mr. Wonderful, came home Wednesday from an overnight work trip and woke up Thursday morning feeling really sick. He had a high temp, and so everyone stayed away from him. He slowly got to feeling better and Saturday I went to my baby shower. It was fun and my girl Colleen is crazy creative. I really should have taken some pictures.
Sunday morning, I wake up and realize I caught whatever it was the Mr. Wonderful brought home. I start watching my temperature, because in pregnancy it is extremely dangerous if it gets too high. I call my doctor’s on call service, and wait while taking Tylenol and downing fluids. I don’t hear anything back and call the office first thing in the morning telling them I am 37 weeks pregnant and I think I have the flu. I get in that afternoon and they run a flu test. Doctor is positive I have the flu, and orders up Tamiflu for me and Mr. Z, and suggests we get the flu shot for him. He wasn’t showing any symptoms. My test comes back negative, but she suggest that I still take the anti-virals just in case baby does come early, we need me to better fast. So we get Mr. Z the flu shot, and pick up anti-virals for us.
I start taking them, but they make me so sick, I fight throwing them up for about an hour to an hour and half and then lose. So I take them for two days and make Mr. Z do the same. His, we had to bribe him to take, it was not fun for any of us. So now it’s Thursday, I am starting to feel close to 100%, Mr. Z hasn’t shown a single symptom and Mr. Wonderful is back to about 90% and finally heads back to campus after being gone for a week.
Thursday afternoon/early evening I am starting to feel more crampy than normal, so I eat dinner and lay down to rest. I get things to stop and Mr. Wonderful convinces me to go out with some friends for a girls night. I go out, laugh, and have a good time. I go home feeling fine and go to bed.
Friday morning, I wake up about 8 (Mr. Z is a night owl like us, and sleeps in to about 8-8.30, don’t hate. His bed time is 8.30, but usually is it 10 before he is actually asleep, oops!) I go to the bathroom, and notice bloody show. I text my doula, as I did not experience this will Mr. Z and get back in bed for a few more minutes of sleep. I am thinking that this normal and in a week or so MAYBE there will be baby. Mr. Wonderful gets up and so do I. I then have this moment where I think, “That’s not me peeing, I just went.” So I go back to the bathroom and realize my water just broke. So I inform Mr. Wonderful he will unfortunately not be going to campus today and he needs to pack some bags.
Now, I am not contracting, so I am calm in knowing that this baby isn’t going to shoot out onto my bedroom floor. I get in bed so I can relax and start calling our list of people to watch Z. I also start texting the doula about when she should come and what we should do. Mr. Wonderful packs bags for Mr. Z for school and for overnight and a friend comes and picks him up. Our doula arrives about that same time and we chat about how we should progress. We get the hospital bag packed and I start making a list of what we need to do ASAP. With my water broken, we know this baby will be coming within the next 24 hours and we are not prepared. On my to-do list for the first was install car seat and pack hospital bag, we were not ready!
My idea labor was to labor more like Mr. Z’s and be at home for as long as possible. The hospital policies here are very different than where he was born and from our earlier visit 9 weeks before, I knew would need to go in much earlier than I wanted. With my water breaking and knowing I was on some artificial clock, we wanted to err more on the side of caution. Who knew, maybe my water had not broken.
So we take a little bit of time, Mr. Wonderful and I go for a little walk and talk about what we should do. We decide that for everyone’s peace of mind we would go in after morning traffic dies down a bit, but before the lunch rush, as we live about 20 minutes away from the hospital. Yes, there are two closer hospitals to us, but I found a doctor that I KNEW was going to listen to me and let me deliver this baby how I wanted and she only delivered at this hospital.
We get to the hospital at about 10.30 am. We have to wait in the ER to be sent to through to admittance, where we have to fill out some paperwork. Finally a nurse comes down and we are allowed to go up to the maternity wing. I ask to walk, not take a wheelchair, because I want my very irregular contractions to pick up. This frustrates the nurse, and we also ask to be allowed straight into the low intervention suite. She states that won’t be happening and puts us in a closet.
To be continued…
