Around 9 pm as I headed to bed on Monday, I started noticing infrequent contractions. I tried not to get too excited since I had been having evening/ night contractions on and off for weeks. I stayed up watching Netflix until about 11 pm when I finally fell asleep. About 1.5 hours into sleep, I woke up with pretty painful contractions that felt like Charlie horses. I couldn't fall back to sleep in between contractions, so I got up and headed to the couch for the rest of the night. Around 4 am or so I started timing them, and they were anywhere from 10-20 minutes apart.
Jason and Matilda eventually got up for the day. At this point, I was pretty sure it was early labor. Matilda had school that day and she wanted me to go with them to drop her off. We were sure to tell her teachers that we thought I might be in labor and that one of Matilda's uncles would probably pick her up. I was a bit worried at this point since my contractions hadn't got any closer, so I put a call into my doctor just in case. They had me go ahead and head up to labor and delivery to get checked out.
We headed home to finish packing our hospital bag, and probably got to L&D a bit before 11 am. They said I was a centimeter dilated and told me to head home until my contractions were 3-5 minutes apart. So, we picked up Chick-fil-a on our way home. Jordan met us at the house to eat lunch and hang out for a bit. Jason installed a car seat in Jordan's car in case anything progressed so he would have it for Matilda. I ate and went to lay down to rest. At this point, my contractions quickly dropped to consistently 10 minutes apart, and then all of the sudden, with little to no warning (around 1 pm), they were 3-5 minutes apart. I had tried a heating pad to help with the pain, but what worked the best was me standing, leaning over, and Jason pushing on my lower back during every contraction.
We had Jordan head to pick up Matilda and since we were nearly an hour into the 3-5 minute contractions, we made the call to go ahead and head back up to L&D before Jordan and Matilda got back to the house.
We got to L&D between 2-3 pm. We were only in the triage room for a very short bit before they sent us to our labor room. I tried to labor as long as I could without the epidural, but by 6 pm, I was exhausted and fighting the contractions rather than relaxing through them. I pretty much just sat with my eyes closed, cross-legged on the labor bed, afraid to move, with Jason pushing on my lower back until I asked for the epidural around 6 pm. My water also broke around this same time.
As crunchy as I am, the epidural was the best decision I made that day. It took them about an hour to get everything ready, but once it was in, I felt like a human again. I was surprised how much feeling I still had with the epidural. I could feel my legs and feet, the tops of the contractions, and could change positions on the bed if needed.
Mary, our L&D nurse, left Jason and I to rest for a bit. I put on a podcast and tried to rest, but within 30 minutes or so, Mary rushed back in to start monitoring the baby a bit a closer. Within minutes, we had 10-12 nurses and doctors in the room. Mabel's heartbeat had started to dip to the 90 range during contractions. They assured us this is not uncommon when a labor is progressing quickly, but because of my previous C-section, they needed to make sure I wasn't experiencing a uterine rupture or anything else that could be causing the baby distress. Sure enough, I had dilated from about 4 centimeters when they administered the epidural to 6 centimeters within the hour. Within about 30 more minutes, I was 7 centimeters dilated.
I was fairly calm through the excitement. Besides some pretty bad shakes, I was feeling ok. They put a heartrate monitor on Mabel's scalp, added some more "amniotic" type of fluid back into me, and had me rotate from side to side during contractions to see if maybe her cord was getting compressed in certain positions. At this point, I was so thankful I had gotten the epidural. I would have been miserable trying to labor naturally through all of that. Also, in case they did need to make the decision to head to an emergency C-section, I wouldn't have to be put under general anesthesia.
Mabel's heartbeat finally stabilized and my doctor arrived and made the decision to let me continue to labor. About two hours later, around 10 pm, I asked Mary if she thought Mabel was going to be born on the 11th or 12th. She said it was hard to say. I told her I had been feeling pressure down low and my contractions had been about 1-2 minutes apart, so she went ahead and checked me again. Sure enough, I was fully dilated and Mabel was sitting low enough for me to start pushing.
She set up delivery table and within an hour, Mabel was born. I had been worried about her being sunny side up for delivery since she had been crazy active during labor and I had thought I had felt some kicks in the front. Luckily, she was in a good position for delivery. There was some meconium during the final phase, but the NICU nurses quickly checked her out and handed her back to me for skin on skin time. She took about 15-30 minutes to be interested in feeding, but eventually made a decent attempt.
I think the hardest part of the whole experience was going into labor in the middle of one night and delivering in the middle of the next. By Wednesday morning, I realized that I had only had 1.5 hours of sleep since Sunday night.
The rest of our hospital stay was relatively calm. Matilda meeting her little sis was one of the happiest and cutest moments I've ever experienced. She was so excited to finally meet her.
Here are some pictures from the rest of our hospital stay...
All dressed up and ready to head home...
And in case you were wondering, newborn Mabel and Matilda look nothing alike...
It will be interesting to see if they have any similar features as they continue to grow.
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