At just over 36 weeks and on Kirk's birthday, we had our final prenatal appointment with our midwife before we transitioned to the care of a M.D. due to our breech position. She checked me over and said, "I give you one week! You're going into full out labor... SOON!" Then she faxed all our medical records over to our new doctor.
The very next day, I went into labor.
I knew I was having contractions, but I thought, "Ah, hell. It's probably not the real thing." So I went to barre class. Later that night, I got up from the couch and noticed I left a wet spot where I was sitting (sorry if that's TMI - turns out, birthing a baby is one big TMI story). I thought, "Dang, pregnancy just keeps getting more disgusting! What the %&*! is that?! Man, I hope Kirk didn't notice..."
Friday morning (the day Henry was born), I still had contractions and still didn't think it was the real deal. Yes, they were painful, but I have a high pain tolerance and they didn't stop me from doing what I wanted/needed to get done. So I had a normal blogging morning, then headed out to White Rock Lake to get a walk in. There was a few times I had to slow wayyyyyyyyyy down for a contraction to pass. After my three to four mile power walk, I continued to go about my day, just breathing through contractions as they came. In fact, I even headed to the mall to get some more Clinique products I was running low on!
Now, after my trip to the mall, I was very low on gas. I also had to pee really bad, so I decided to skip the gas station and just head home. It was about 4pm. I was wearing bright white shorts. When I went, I noticed there was (yet again!) a wet stain on my shorts, that had leaked all the way through to the outside (of COURSE I wore white out in public, right?!). "Hmmmm... Yeah, I know I didn't pee on myself, and sweat wouldn't look like that in my shorts. I'm calling my mom!" Ok, so I have an advanced degree. I'm nearly 30 years old. But when sh*! gets real, the first person I think to call is my mom. Do we ever outgrow needing our mamas?! I don't think so.
"Hey mom - do you think my water broke and I just didn't notice a pop and there just wasn't a gross gush?" I asked. "Paige, CALL YOUR DOCTOR!" So I did. And she said that I needed to come in right away, and to bring our hospital bags. Then I was left with the task of calling my husband and figuring out what the heck city he was in! "Hey, babe, where are you and when will you be home?!" I asked. "I'm just about 20 minutes away. You want me to pick up something for dinner or something?" he replied. "Nope, turns out, my water broke! We need to go to the hospital as soon as you get home!" "WHAT?! Ok. Bye!"
My husband has never exited a phone call faster. See, he was making a two hour drive home from client meetings and on a conference call. It just so happened he decided to answer my call in the middle of his professional conference call. He had to get back and excuse himself from his clients!
So we go in. They check us into triage and I see a resident to run a few tests on me to ensure that, indeed, my water had broken. While we were waiting for my doctor to arrive and review the results, my belly was hooked up to a monitor to check on Henry's heart and monitor my contractions. Once our doctor arrived, she learned that they couldn't find my tests... She was clearly annoyed with the residents when she glanced over at the monitor readout. "Paige, are you really having contractions every two-three minutes?!" she asked. "Um... Yeah." "Don't they bother you?! Aren't you in pain by now?!" she asked. I replied, "Well, I'm super uncomfortable, but what good is complaining going to do about it?!"
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| All checked in and awaiting a room for our c section... Looking super pregnant and sweating from the TX heat! |
And with that, the doctor didn't even need to see the results of the amniotic fluid test. She said that if my water hadn't broken yet, that I would be back to the hospital within four to six hours anyway, so they were going to admit us, and we would have our baby that night! I was 36 weeks and four days.
It was surreal getting checked in, getting an IV placed and running, and waiting for an operating room to open up (the hospital we were at had 36 beds for the birth wing... and they birthed 57 babies the night Henry was born!). We had to wait about four hours for the O.R. and in the interim, the contractions got STRONG. Kirk rubbed my back, as I got more and more agitated about our long wait.
When everyone and everything was ready, I got escorted to the O.R. They began an epidural and a spinal block on me - which is what I was TERRIFIED for! But truthfully, it wasn't that bad. The first shot (of whatever the heck it was) was the worst. Then, everything started to feel numb. I even said to Kirk, "Oh thank God! The contractions are now gone!"
The doctors took over from there! I was so surprised to see my husband pull back the curtain and snap all kinds of shots of what they were doing to me. How do you watch doctors cut open your wife's belly?! I don't know, but he did... Then again, he did do three years of college as a pre-med student, before coming to his senses and switching to business school. Anyhow, I went in to the O.R at 10pm; Henry was born at 10:15pm; and we were in the recovery room holding our new baby boy by about 11pm!
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| Daddy with Henry right after he was born and while mommy got stitched up. |
The first night was ROUGH. I'm talking shaking, sweating, vomiting rough (nurse Andrea at Baylor Dallas - you're an angel of a nurse for taking such good care of me!). On top of that, we opted to keep Henry with us in our room throughout our stay, because I did NOT want the nurses feeding him formula garbage. So, in addition to being quite ill, I had to nurse and take care of a baby! Kirk did all the lifting and changing since I still couldn't feel my legs. Things got much easier by mid-day the second day, and by the second night, we were in good shape!
I absolutely could not have done this without Kirk. He did pretty much everything for me for our hospital stay, from feeding me ice chips to changing Henry to running home to let our dogs out. He watched his wife get cut open, got puked on by her and peed on by his son all within 24 hours, didn't get served food by the hospital and froze to death on a couch every night since I demanded the room be kept to about 62 degrees. I may have had to suffer through a pregnancy and a surgery, but he had to tough out some bad conditions himself! Let's hear it for the good husbands, right ladies?!
That was how little Henry entered our world! We've been in love ever since.
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| The day we came home from the hospital with our sweet boy Henry Malcolm. |
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