A Little Bit of Baby in my Life: William's Birth Story

Lets just say that the first time you go into labor you have no clue what to expect or what it feels like. Matt and I had a bunch of "almosts" a few weeks leading to Liam's birth. Two weeks prior at about 37 1/2 weeks pregnant Matt and I decided to drive down to Moab for free National Park weekend. I had some bad heartburn that morning so I took some pepto and we went on our merry way. Well... about halfway to Green River I started feeling... pain in my back and contractions coming about every 7-10 minutes. It varied a lot. I told myself that we will stop and eat at Ray's in Green River and if I don't feel better then we would turn around. Once I got out of the car I felt better and it went away. So we continued on down to Moab... but after a few minutes it came back.. even worse. I felt so bad that once we got to Moab and I walked around a bit and when it wouldn't go away we headed back to price. I thought it was it until I got home and took a bath and it went completely away. Darn.

The next week we had another false alarm where I woke up with contractions coming 5 minutes apart that were not very painful but were consistent so we headed to the hospital. Needless to say they sent us home telling us that they expected us back that night since my contractions were 3-4 minutes apart while they were monitoring me. Once home it continued until I fell asleep that night and they went away. But the whole rest of that week I would have a really strong contraction once an hour. It was frustrating, not sure when it would kick up a notch.

But on Sunday morning January 29th I woke up to go to the bathroom at about 5:15am. As I walked out of the bedroom Matt asked me how I was doing (he was just as eager and waiting for signs as I was). I told him that I just felt "pain" since I had some cramping. I proceeded to empty my bladder, then I gave a little "push" (sorry if this is tmi) for a bowel movement and i heard a bunch of water trickle out of me. Know I knew that I had just emptied my bladder all the way so there was no way it was urine. My water had broken in the Toilet! How lucky is that? At this point I yell at Matt to get up and get ready because we are headed to the hospital. Literally leaking everywhere I decided to take a shower and eat something since I felt gross already and I knew that by the end of the day I would only feel worse so might as well get cleaned up while I can.

Once at the hospital (1.5 hours after my water broke) I still hadn't started contracting. I was just having cramping. I had a "mild" freakout while changing into the hospital gown when I saw the blood on my pad and I started crying thinking my placenta was tearing away. The nurse ran in and calmed me down by telling me that that amount of blood was perfectly normal.

Since I was leaking everywhere I felt like I had to sit in bed the whole time (I would not recommend this) and sitting in bed got worse once they started me on pitocin since I hadn't started contracting on my own. Luckily I didn't have to endure too many contractions. Once they started getting really bad I got the wonderful epidural. At this point I just relaxed and read the Hunger Games the rest of the time.

At about 5:00pm I was fully dilated and ready to push. They called my doctor to come and lifted my limp legs up on the stirrups. It took probably 5 or so contractions (about 30 minutes of pushing) and my little Liam entered this world.

He weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and was absolutely perfect. I cried when they gave me his slimy little body and was so surprised at how big this baby that just came out of me was. (even though he was so tiny)