Liam's due date was March 22nd, but I always felt like it was a little off. Actually the first time I went to the doctor 8 weeks pregnant by my calculations the doctor thought I might just have a blighted ovum because she saw an egg sac but no fetus. She said it might be a really early pregnancy, like 2 weeks. Thank goodness she was wrong, but this made my due date a little hazy.
About 3 weeks before Liam was due I started having small contractions throughout the day (maybe a little more, because I was still working when they started). Then on Monday March 8th, I went to my scheduled doctor's appointment and he said I was 2cm dilated and 75% effaced. He said that he would be surprised if he didn't see me within the next day or two.
That night I started having more regular contractions, but they still weren't too painful. Like they said if you can't walk or talk through them they are the real thing, so we just kept a little log of how long they lasted and how far apart they were. We got everything ready to go just in case we had to leave in the night. When we went to bed that night they were about ten minutes apart. I laid awake that night, like it was Christmas Eve, giddy with anticipation.
Surprisingly, I slept really well (my last night of real sleep!). I awoke at 6:30 to my water breaking. I am remember being so worried that I wouldn't know it when my water broke, that I would be one of the women who gets a slow leak. Not the case! I told Will that it had broke, and he said "Are you sure?" Yea pretty sure!
He got up and took a shower, while I got the dogs ready to go to Poppi and Mimi's. We left the house around 7:30. We had made the decision that I would deliver at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, because the hospitals here left something to be desired. When we made the decision I knew we would have to drive an hour while I was in labor, but I failed to take into account the windy mountain pass we would be traveling. Bracing myself around a corner during a contraction was not super fun. We also had to stop by Will's parents to drop off our dogs. By the time we got to the hospital my contractions were about 4 minutes apart.
I had to walk into the hospital which was really hard and scary, and when we got to the check in I started to cry. It was definitely a mix of pain and fear of what was to come. They took me to a beautiful delivery room and tried to make me comfortable. They started an IV so that I could have my epidural. The contractions seemed to be one on top of the other now, and I was worried that they wouldn't get the epidural done in time.
Finally the anesthesiologist came in. Will told him that we had decided in our Childbirth Prep classes that we would like to have a light epidural so that I wasn't so numb that I wouldn't know when or how to push. The anesthesiologist said there was no such thing and that epidurals just have different effects on everyone (the one that came to our class said that there were definitely light and heavy epidurals, but whatever, just give it to me!) It was pretty painful, but knowing that I should be pain free soon helped me to bear the pain. After he was done he told me to lie on my left side to help it work, and about 15 minutes later the nurse had me roll over onto my right side so that it could numb both sides evenly. As soon as I rolled over the baby's heart rate dropped and she said to roll back over and she gave me an oxygen mask. That was a little scary, but his heart rate came back up pretty quickly.
For the next few hours I relaxed comfortably while nurses came in and out and checked me. I even had a popsicle, thinking a little sugar might help me make it through the next few hours. My doctor still wasn't there yet, but my lovely nurse said that she was going to have me push a few times to see how we were doing. I was nearly fully dilated and 100% effaced by about 12:30. After we pushed a few times, she said we would see if we could wait for Dr. Capo. He arrived shortly there after. We pushed a few more times (I threw up my popsicle) and then he said he could feel his head. One more push and he was out.
They laid him on me and I broke down. I was sobbing, out of joy, and out of relief. At the time I had no idea what I was in for, I thought I did, but I didn't, no one could!
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