I last posted on Saturday December 19th that baby girl was still inside, and I had been mall-walking and hot-wing-eating...
That Sunday, we had all my in-laws over for Christmas gift exchanging (since we'd be in the hospital over Christmas). That entailed 7 adults and two teenager girls (plus us - 2 and a toddler) for whom I made chicken lasagna from scratch... ("oh this? just something I threw together!")
I had contractions throughout the evening and just pegged them for being on my feet all day, and probably not as hydrated as I should have been...
They continued through Monday - the same kind of contractions I'd been having really for a few weeks - regularly inconsistent: some were 4 minutes apart, some were 15... but, here and there would be a slightly stronger-than-usual contraction that made me sit back a little and wonder...
I went to my regularly scheduled weekly doctor checkup that morning (Monday December 21st) and saw one of the covering physicians from another practice (something my practice does so you've seen a few of the possible doctors that may be covering/on-call at the hospital whenever you go into labor...)
Just like the visit before, as the doctor felt baby girl while I laid back on the table, she felt a contraction hit (why do they feel the need to tell you, "oh that's a contraction!" - REALLY?! yea, pretty sure I knew that!)
She finished the exam, I sat up and chuckled and said, "yup there's another one" (contraction)... and as we finished chatting (I'm sure me talking about how I was ready for baby to come - sore pelvic bones, can't reach my feet, etc) I had 1-2 more contractions... (I was still only 1cm dilated...)
at that point, the doc was like, "um ok - so you've had like, 4 contractions in the 15 minutes we've been sitting here - what do you want to do?!"
To which I said, "I have options to Wednesday's scheduled surgery??
I felt silly, with "not real" labor (according to my mom... it should make you unable to concentrate on anything! ...) whining that I was uncomfortable (who isn't in the last few weeks of pregnancy?) and wanting to move up delivery by just 48 hours...
Of course, the doctor made a few valid points - if I'm not attempting a VBAC, why go through labor pains and "real" contractions?
And - it was more dangerous to be headed into a c-section while in active labor, the whole point of scheduling them 1 week before an EDD was to totally avoid mom being in labor...
so - a text to E ("so there's an opportunity for this to go down today... call me!!") followed by phone discussions of the logistics (who would pickup Button from daycare?? who would watch our dogs?? who would take care of Button the next day with daycare drop offs and pickups?? *in-laws had been scheduled to help with that given our 12/23 scheduled date - they were all still working!!*) and we were off, me from the doctor and E from work, to meet at home, grab hospital bags, and head into L&D!
(Of course, once home - I had to do things like start a load of laundry... (the car seat liner still needed to be washed!) and organize the nursery a little more, and pack the last minute items for my hospital bag, and get the guest bedroom ready for my parents who would be flying in the day of hospital discharge!)
Once E got home from work, we loaded up and headed to Button's daycare to drop off his overnight bag (MIL would be picking him up that evening and bringing him home with her...) unfortunately, it was the middle of naptime, so we peeked in on him from the door and whispered, "We're off to meet your baby sister!"
We got to the hospital, and started the checking-in process...
my view from bed!
(doctor introduced herself, of course it was one I hadn't seen yet in all the office visits I'd had... she went over the surgery, said she'd check out my appendix while in there, and remove if needed, which was kind of random... lol)
(In the meantime, just like her big brother - once Momma got hooked up to the fetal monitors, contractions occurred regularly every 4-6 minutes for almost 2 hours... And those now-regular contractions had started to feel a bit more intense...)
The Dr started mentioning the possibility of bumping a scheduled 5pm CS to get me in earlier... she looked again at the print-out of contraction dips & peaks and said, "yea - we're definitely bumping the 5pm!"
It was around 2:30 at this point, and we all prepared for an OR time of 3:30 to meet our baby girl!
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