Our Birth Story – Part 2
We arrived at the hospital and went to triage on the second floor. They had me fill out some paperwork and do a urine sample. Then they hooked me up to a fetal monitor. The nurse told me “You just had a contraction!” I was like….”WHAT?!” I was shocked. Josh looked stunned too! I said I had no idea that I’d had one! When she told me I was having another one, I recognized the feeling, but had NOT REALIZED that was a contraction! I had been having that feeling off and on for DAYS and had been assuming all that time that it was Lillian pressing out against my stomach! I always thought she was trying to stretch out in there, when in reality it was a contraction! That feeling was always preceded and accompanied by a real crampy feeling, sort of like period cramps. I had not put two and two together until I was on the fetal monitor that the cramps were related to the “stretching” feeling. There also didn’t seem to be any particular interval of time between them. So it was definite…I was in labor!
The nurse said she’d test me as well to see if my amniotic fluid was leaking. I told her I’d been having slight pink discharge since Wednesday. She said the blood in the discharge could have caused the litmus paper to turn blue and she thought it was highly unlikely that my waters had broken. She checked my cervix (Ouch…these procedures were painful! It was like a pap smear but worse!) and said my cervix was still really far back (but slightly softened) and that I wasn’t dilated. She took a sample of the discharge and went to look at it under a microscope. She said if it “ferned” after it dried, it was definitely amniotic fluid, but if it didn’t, it was just regular mucousy discharge. I didn’t know what to hope for at this point! She came back and said “It’s amniotic fluid!” Josh and I looked at each other in awe…this is it! I asked if we could go back home to continue laboring. It was always our intention to labor at home as long as possible and come in to the hospital at the last possible moment, LOL! She said “No, you’re not leaving this hospital until your baby is born!” I was simultaneously ecstatic and disappointed! Ecstatic because we’d finally meet our daughter, and disappointed because I really had wanted to labor in the comfort of our own home. I looked over at Josh, and we both had tears in our eyes; tears of excitement and joy. This was really happening! We wouldn’t be going home without our daughter!!
To Be Continued…
