In order to help serve baby Lorenz's eviction notice, we packed out weekend full of activities and obligations so that Murphy's law would go into effect and he would decide to arrive in order to ruin all of our plans. Friday night, we had a surprise birthday to go to. I had been feeling contractions on and off that evening, but it definitely wasn't go time. Saturday, we had an engagement party to attend. I was able to start timing the contractions, and even needed to sit down a little through them, but they dissipated after a couple of hours. Sunday, we had Luke VS's first birthday to attend in the afternoon, all the way out in Ham Lake.
We decided that it would be a good idea to have the car seat locked and loaded, and the bags thrown into the car just in case we needed to make a mad 40 minute dash to the hospital. All through the birthday party, I was having contractions, and was able to start timing them again. This time they became much more consistent, and I could see a pattern starting to emerge. By the time we got home from the birthday party, they were coming on about every 5 minutes, and were at least 1 minute in length. After about an hour, I texted Mary to see if she followed the 5-1-1 rule, and she suggested that I call ASAP.
I called the maternity ward, and the head nurse told me to continue to monitor the contractions for the next hour, and to call back if they hadn't gone away. After an hour of putzing around the house, making sure the nursery was ready, and chatting with Luke, I called back at 5pm, and the nurse told us to come on in. Luke quickly packed his bag, and we got the dogs ready for the potential long haul.
I cried as I hugged Lucy and Kale goodbye. Not only because I was going to miss them while I was stuck in the hospital, but because I knew that the next time I would see them, everything would be changing, and they no longer were going to be my only babies.
At about 6pm, we walked out the door of our house for the last time as a family of 2, and my water broke. It wasn't the big gush that movies and TV shows make it out to be. It was more of a trickle, and I was convinced that I had lost control of my bladder. I sat on a plastic Target bag the entire 8 minute ride to St. John's just in case. I remember being concerned that people were going to see that my shorts were wet and judge me, but Luke reminded me that people would probably get what was going on as a 9 months pregnant lady waddles her way to the maternity ward.
At 6:15pm, I checked in and we were brought back to the room that would be my home away from home for the next 3 days. After gowning up, determining that the leaking was actually amniotic fluid, the nurse checked me, and I was 4 cm dilated. Since I was having back labor, she showed Luke how to provide counter pressure during contractions. I wanted to try different ways of laboring, but after trying to labor on all four, using a yoga ball, walking the ward, I realized that the only way for me to get through the contractions was to lean over the counter in the room, and breath through them.
At about 9 or 10pm, I asked Luke to let the nurse know that I wanted the epidural, and within the hour, I was numb from the waist down. My nurse turned down the lights, put on soothing music, and let me be. Every hour, she would come in to turn me over. I know that when I do have another baby, I will do the same thing- labor on my own for as long as I can go, and then get the epidural once I can't handle it anymore. The relief that it brought was amazing, and as I think back, I don't think I would have had the energy to push if I hadn't gotten the small amount of rest when I did.
By midnight, I was still only about 6 cm, and they realized that the baby was sunnyside up (and slowing down his progress), so they placed a peanut shaped yoga ball between my knees in hopes that gravity would help turn him over. This seemed to work. After about 6 more hours, and one epidural bag refill, I finally was almost complete. They had me do some practice pushes, and they had me labor down until about 7am, and that's when they had me start pushing for real. It was a strange feeling to push. I could tell when I was having a contraction, due to the fact that the epidural wore off on my left hip, so I could feel each contraction in that localized spot, and therefore knew when to push.
Over the last 9 months, Luke and I had discussed labor expectations, and I told him that he was to remain by my head for the entirety of my labor and delivery (and he readily agreed), but things changed rather quickly. The nurses got Luke pretty involved by having him hold a leg while I pushed, so he got a pretty good view of everything going on. When the baby started to crown, they asked him if he wanted to see, and he decided to take a look. They asked me if I wanted to feel, and despite the fact that I said I never wanted to do anything like that, I changed my mind and felt the top of his little head. That made everything so much more real. During the time I had been pushing, I kept my eyes closed for most of it, so once I felt his head, it kicked in that this was really happening, and that I was going to be meeting my son very soon.
I pushed for an hour and a half, and at about 8:20, the doctor came in, suited up, and the nurses broke off the bottom part of the table in preparation for delivery. At 8:36am, Maxwell Jacob took his first breath, cried his first cry, and my first words to Luke were, "Is he really a boy?" I had to ask Luke twice (he was rightfully distracted in the moment!), and he finally confirmed that the ultrasound tech was right 20 weeks prior. As the doctors immediately placed my baby on my chest as they rubbed him down, the first thing I said to my son was, "Ooohh, hi baby, hi baby." The whole thing still feels so surreal, and I would have a hard time believing that it all really happened if it wasn't for the fact that Max is actually here.
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