I’ll interrupt my normal homeschooling post to chat a bit about yesterday. I thought we’d meet our new little girl yesterday, but it wasn’t to be.
I had another bad night. Well, a worse night than the other bad night. I woke up at 2am with “uterine irritability” which I’ve had lots in other pregnancies. I haven’t had big problem with dehydration this time around, which as been good. Well, until last night. We were watching Downton Abby before bed, and Knut had the Wheat Thins out, and I just started eating them without thinking that whenever I have lots of salty things in the 3rd trimester, I tend to pay for it a few hours later. I did.
I was up from 2-5am that night, which was miserable. I wasn’t having contractions. Those feel like waves of an intense workout. Uterine irritability is a constant pain that feels like your uterus is being ripped out. Since I’ve had it before, I recognized it right away, and cursed myself for eating all that salt. I called my midwife, and she helped me over the phone get everything to settle down. I was having a hard time getting the water to stay down, but after some bites of oatmeal and sips of pregnancy tea, the water stayed put, and I was able to go back to sleep without any pain.
Knut was able to call in at work, and let me sleep in pretty late yesterday morning. I called B, the midwife, when I eventually woke up to let her know everything was good. A few hours later, though, I was getting contractions pretty hard. They were varying from every 10 minutes to every 3. They were all over a minute long. They were hard.
So I called her to see if it was too early to call as I was on the fence on whether or not it was real labor, and she thought she’d come out to our place, just to be on the safe side. I don’t think I’ve explicitly said before on the blog that we’re planning a homebirth. I think that’s mostly for another post. It will likely be a long, drawn out boring/rambling post that you readers must be very used to by now. Or I’ll just ignore giving any explanation as to why we chose this route since its no one’s business anyway, and just let you know when we have a baby. (I’m getting snarky near the end of this pregnancy, aren’t I?)
Anyway, she came out on the early side of my laboring, just because I have a history of fast births, and we just wanted her on standby.
I wasn’t going to call anyone else yet, and she didn’t call out her assistants until we were sure that I wasn’t going to stall. Knut dropped the kids off at his aunt’s house, and so all afternoon, it was just Knut, B, and me at home. It was really quiet.
B checked on the baby’s heart rate. She did some vitals on me, and checked me out. Then she told me to just go about my business and let her know if I needed anything. She said she had all the time in the world, and if it wasn’t time, it made no difference to her. So she read her magazine, and helped me a bit with the laundry I was working on. Really, there wasn’t much for me to do, but it felt really good to move and sway, and the contractions were coming steady, but not overwhelming.
Knut hung out with us for awhile, but also took out the trash and tended to the chickens for me. He also cleaned the whole kitchen from top to bottom, which was nice.
It was a very quiet day. For awhile, things were really picking up, and I told Knut and B that it was starting to get really intense, and I thought I may soak in the tub for a bit to ease the intensity. B was getting ready to call her assistants to come since I was obviously getting some seriously intense ones. I changed my mind, though, when I got to the top of the stairs, and opted to wrap Christmas presents instead. Laboring at home is funny like that.
Then things started to slow down to every 10 minutes. Then every 15 minutes. Then they sped up to every 4 minutes, but only lasting about 45 seconds or so. That lasted for an hour. I was getting frustrated. Knut and B were very encouraging. B kept checking baby’s heartbeat every hour, and making sure I was staying hydrated.
By supper time, I realized for sure that things were stopping. It wasn’t going to be baby day. I asked B if she would like to check me one more time, and then stay for supper. She agreed to both. I had not dilated any more all day. Confirmation that nothing happened. Then we had lasagna. Then Knut went to pick up the kids who were now at his parent’s house. While Knut got the kids, B insisted on doing the dishes so I could just sit and rest, and reflect on the day, and not let the emotions of disappointment overwhelm me.
As she left, she told me that I still shouldn’t hesitate to call her day or night. She’s never had a baby not come. Plus, she had fun hanging out, and wouldn’t mind doing it a few more times with no baby at the end, though for my sake, she hoped it would be soon.
That’s the end of this story. I feel like I got the day off yesterday as my house got clean around me, and my kids were well cared for elsewhere. It was an exhausting day, still. Emotionally, physically…etc. It’s just not time yet.
Well, we know our baby won’t stay in there forever. I still have a week and a half to my due date. I will say, it’s much easier to send the midwife home, then to be sent home from the hospital.
At least my house is clean…and most of the Christmas present wrapping got done. Everything but the gifts that haven’t arrived/been purchased yet. Also, the baby has currently completed turning around and is no longer posterior. (That means she was set to come out facing the wrong direction a few weeks ago, and is now facing the right direction, which will mean an easier birth.) Now if she’ll just stay that way.
I’ll just try to hold onto that for awhile and try not to dwell on the number of people I inconvenienced yesterday. I think that the most challenging part of these last few days/weeks is the mental aspect of accepting help, asking for help, and being so helpless to any of it. We’ll make it, though. We always do.
Melissa says
December 14, 2012 at 11:13 amOhhhh, Gretchen! Thinking of you often! Every contraction gets you closer…I found with #9 that I was in labor for several days, each time thinking it was “time.”
I think the more babies we have, the more “warm-up” our body does–that’s been my experience, anyway.
It sounds like B is very encouraging; I’m glad because we’ll be having her here in April/May! 🙂
Mom says
December 14, 2012 at 2:07 pmWhat a wonderful way to NOT have the baby. What an encouragement B must be to you! I sure hope to meet her someday. Hang in there and don’t feel bad about inconveniencing anyone. You did exactly what you should have done. Babies are just funny sometimes and like to tease us!