My water broke at about 4:30 am on Thursday, February 9. It was odd, in part because I woke up and Just Knew. Five minutes or so later, I got up, and the evidence appeared, but only a little. I rested in bed for another 15 minutes or so, and then really really knew.

I woke up Jill first, told her what was going on, and then went downstairs to put on coffee and call the midwife. The one on call was Experienced Tired Midwife, who recommended that we come in now, rather than waiting until the office opened at 8:30. She added,"I’m here now anyway."

Jill woke her mom and we all headed in to the midwives’ office. After all, hadn’t she said "I’m here" when we were talking about the office?

We got to the office, found the door open and construction work going on, but no midwife. After looking around and waiting for about 5 minutes, we called again.

Fortunately, the hospital is right across the street form the midwives. Of course that’s where she meant by "here."

Tired Experienced Midwife was busy delivering another baby when we arrived; by this time, it was 6:30 or almost 7 am. The hospital shifts are 7a/7p, so we were checked in and strapped to a fetal monitor by random nurses, and then put under the attentive care of Nurse Delightful.

Our midwives switch "on call" at 8 am, and since Tired Experienced Midwife was delivering a baby, we never saw her.

Young Midwife came in around 8:15 and enthusiastically talked about what needed to happen. She was going to do an exam to see how far I was dilated; the baby looked good on the monitor, but my contractions were not very intense or close together, so it would probably be awhile.

Upon examining me, she was a little less encouraging. I hadn’t progressed AT ALL since she examined me in the office a week earlier: 1 cm dilated, baby at -3 station.

Young Midwife didn’t want to start me on pitocin when I wasn’t dilated at all; instead, she wanted to put me on some kind of medicinal suppository that would soften the cervix and help it dilate. Unfortunately, the dosage is for 12 hours, and she thought I might need 2 doses before I would be ready to handle the pitocin.

We thought "great!" Twelve hours is plenty of time to go home, get more organized for the hospital stay, eat something, etc.

Meanwhile, Jill’s mom is in the waiting room. Her flight home is for 1 pm. A decision needs to be made about whether or not she is changing her ticket.

Young Midwife pauses in her enthusiastic explanations and says, "A minute ago, you said something that makes me think there might be a misunderstanding here. You do know that you can’t go home, right?"

Er, no. We thought we could. We thought we were in the group of people at the hospital too early and being sent home.

"We need to monitor the baby to make sure that he isn’t reacting badly to the medication, and to make sure he’s ok in spite of your water breaking."

Oh.

I know this hospital has 2 wireless fetal monitors, they talked about it on the tour. Can I have one set?

No, this room has a broken piece of equipment that we’d need for that, and all of the labor & delivery rooms are full, so I can’t switch rooms.

Good thing there’s a book in my "in labor" hospital bag.

Jill goes out to update her mom and figure out whether she’s going to stay for at least 2 more days,  or go home.

Nurse Delightful starts doing something to my left hand.

Since I know that my left hand is NOT where this medicinal suppository is supposed to go, I immediately know that she is about to do the first thing I was hoping to avoid: insert an IV.

I have a total needle thing. I hate them. I pass out. I can’t see them. It’s just a Bad Thing.

I start explaining that in a freaking out tone of voice. "Do we really have to do this yet?"

Young Midwife and Nurse Delightful agree, yes, we really have to do this now, because if the baby reacts badly to the suppository, they will need to administer other meds immediately. And they’d have to do it later anyway, because I’m clearly going to pass the 18 hours after water breaking window and need antibiotics, and I’ll need pitocin.

Young Midwife goes to find Jill and bring her back into the room so I can have a meltdown and break her fingers while they insert the IV. It takes 3 tries. You know this nurse was wonderful if I can still call her Nurse Delightful after that.

And they decide to use the IV right away to give me fluids, which they hope will calm me down. Grrrr.

They insert the suppository, and Jill leaves to take her mom home to pack, and then to the airport. And as you know, to post an update in the comments.

Over the next 12 hours, I call people. Jill goes and gets some movies. I doze. I have some contractions. I’m bored bored bored. Excited that the baby is coming, but it’s still a while away.

Young Midwife returns to check my progress and probably insert the next dose of the suppository. Dose #1 has disappeared. Since my water broke, I’ve been leaking all day, with Nurse Wonderful and others changing big plastic pads on the bed every hour or so. I’m also allowed to disconnect the monitors for potty breaks, and it could well have escaped during one of those. I was warned to watch for that, and I swear I did, but in any event, it’s gone and we have no idea how long it was in.

She checks me, and there’s been an iota of progress, but I’m still not dilated to 2 cm. Time for dose #2. Jill hangs out and we watch brain candy tv until 9 or 10 pm, then she goes home to get some rest. She was back by 6:30 am on the 10th.

I can’t remember when this happened in the timeline, but it must have been that night or during the wee hours of the next morning, because Young Midwife was still on call. Actually, I think it must have been between 7:30 and 9 am, and Young Midwife stayed to see it through.

I was in some pain from the contractions, which were now close to every 5 minutes, and varied in intensity. Young Midwife recommended that we wait on the epidural, instead trying a narcotic painkiller that would let me still get up and go to the bathroom. I agreed.

What a total waste. It made me feel loopy and vaguely high, but it didn’t do ANYTHING for the pain. At least not anything I could distinguish. After about an hour, I was utterly frustrated and sick of it. Give me the damn epidural, even though it is a shot, and the needles are the stuff of nightmares.

(Aside: Our hospital has a policy that all support people in the room during the epidural have to be sitting down. This is because one of my co-workers, a funky, heavily pierced & tattooed hipster guy, decided to watch his wife get her epidural in August. To his surprise, he passed out, and fell so hard he got a concussion. He came to in the ER, where of course he wigged out because he was supposed to be with his wife at the end of her high-risk pregnancy.)

Jill didn’t want to watch anyway.

She held my hand while I cried and tried to be as responsive to the instructions and still as possible. Within 15 minutes, I was asleep and stayed out of it for 3 hours.

All morning and early afternoon, I was on and off of a pitocin drip. I’d be on it for awhile, and then the baby would start reacting badly to the contractions — his heartrate would decelerate instead of accelerate. So they’d stop it for awhile, and then try again.

By this time, Calming Older Midwife was the one on call. In the early afternoon, she examined me and announced that I was making progress, but not much. I’d finally become 2 cm dilated.

Around 2 pm, I really needed to pee. Nurse Delightful was back and ours, and she explained that she was going to catheterize me. Ick, but great. She got out a catheter, and then left the room for a few minutes.

When she returned, she looked at the catheter she’d gotten out, then put it away and got out a different one, which she inserted.

As soon as she left the room, Jill and I looked at each other.

"Do you think they’re going to do a c-section?"

"Yeah…I think so, sweetie. Are you ok with that?"

"Yeah. At this point, it’ll be a relief." Pause. "Did you know they were going to do it because the only reason she’d need a different catheter is if they need one they can leave in during surgery?"

Jill laughed. "I’d been expecting it for a little while, actually. But that was pretty much confirmation."

Nurse Delightful came back into the room.

Jill asked, in a teasing tone, "So, Nurse Delightful, level with us. When do they want to do the c-section?"

Nurse Delightful instantly looked guilty, admitting that they were talking about it, and were thinking it would be in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

I teased too, announcing that I knew it when she switched catheters. She said that she’d gotten a little flak about that for being pessimistic. But we assured her that we knew it was probably coming after Calming Older Midwife told us that I was only 2 cm dilated.

Shortly, Calming Older Midwife returned to us. "Should we get this baby out of there?"

We agreed.

She joked that she’d be willing to wait it out, except that on our current timeline, that would have him coming in a week, and she didn’t think I’d want to be strapped into bed for that long.

We agreed with that too.

"OK then. There’s another c-section going on in a little while, so let’s plan to do yours in about an hour."

They kicked up my epidural, and Jill and I hung out and waited.

Next Installment - The Birth Story, Part 2: The C-Section Itself, OR Wow! I Expected This To Be So Much Worse