A Stree is born

On Friday when I went in to the Birthing Center for my nonstress test, I got my membranes swept. This was probably around 2pm or so. Came home. Got some work done. Around 4:30pm I was resting on the bed when I started to feel cramping and my hips started to hurt. I didn’t think I could possibly be in labor yet, and the cramping wasn’t totally letting up. But then I started using my timing app and found out that the contractions were about 7 minutes apart and lasting just under a minute. Somehow I still couldn’t believe that I was in labor, mainly because I’d never heard of hip pain happening. I spent a lot of time on the toilet exiting my bowels and making it through that way. I also spent some time leaning on the railing by the stairs and leaning over the bed. At about 7:30pm I was at my computer and then felt a contraction so I stood against the wall. I felt a pop and a gush, so I was pretty sure my water had broken. I called the Birthing Center hotline and also my doula, Namaste. The midwife on call was Mary. She said that I could keep laboring at home and she’d call me back around 10pm if she hadn’t heard from me. An hour, and a lot of hip pain later, my contractions were at 4.5 minutes apart, lasting about a minute. Sometime after that I was feeling tired so I tried to rest, but it wasn’t working. Around 9:30 I knew I was not managing the hip pain well. It just wouldn’t go away, no matter what I did, so I asked Namaste to come over. At 10pm Mary called and I was contracting every 3-4 minutes, lasting for around a minute. Mary said it would take her 30 minutes to get to the Birthing Center and which room did I want. I had originally wanted the Santa Fe room, but since they changed it to the Barcelona room, the Windsor room was more appealing to me. I set a timer for 20 minutes because I knew it took 10 minutes to get to the Birthing Center.

The Windsor Room, fit for a King

 

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Originally published at my pregnancy blog. Please leave any comments there.