Ollie
Nine days before my due date I went to my weekly midwife appointment. I saw Kathy and she wanted to check me just to see what was going on. I knew the information wasn’t really terribly useful but I figured what the hell. I was 1 cm.
The next day I noticed that my contractions, which I’d been having off an on for weeks (if not months) were picking up speed. I timed them throughout the day and by evening they had been every four minutes apart for several hours. Not painful but given Bug’s rapid entrance into our world I knew I would be up all night worried over it. So we had my parents come over and we headed into L&D as a precaution. Meg was the midwife on duty and she said I was at 3 cm at that point and that they were definitely regular but hadn’t picked up strength yet. She gave me the option of walking and coming back up in an hour and possibly being admitted or going home and sleeping. I opted to go home. I took a Tylenol PM and blissfully slept. I was so happy to be home. I was just not ready mentally for labor, I was exhausted. I woke up throughout the night with very strong contractions and figured by morning it would be time to go have the baby. I was feeling good about things at that point.
Morning came, one week before my due date exactly and the strong contractions were still happening but very erratically. Sometimes 20 minutes apart, sometimes 2. I was pretty sure the baby was posterior and was afraid that was causing things to stall. I had been given instructions to come straight back to the hospital when they intensified, which they had but since they had spaced out I didn’t think it made sense to go in just yet. I called and talked to Susan, my regular midwife to see what she thought. She agreed we should wait until they were more regular. I went outside for a walk and when I came back in I had a particularly “WTF” contraction and I swear that is when the baby flipped. Regular or not I wanted to go back in and see what was going on. I have this fear about having to rush to the hospital in the middle of the night. I think that is what pushed me both evenings to go ahead and go in early so that it wouldn’t be three AM and we have two sleeping preschoolers to arrange care for. Andrew’s parents were already on their way from Asheville to spend the weekend “just in case” so it was actually really good timing. We got over to UNC a little after six and luckily Susan was still on call. It was nice to have her there to deliver one of our babies since I have known her so long. At that point I was 6 cm so they admitted me. As I was waiting to be moved to a delivery room my water broke. HOLY wow that was weird. Never had that happen before. What a hot mess. After that happened I hit transition within minutes. Baby time! They set me up in a room with a really nice looking Jacuzzi and I was looking forward to getting in it but the baby had other plans. As I was about to hop in Susan mentioned that I should tell her when I felt like I needed to push. I was like… uhhh oh…. Ten minutes ago? So she said to go for it, so I did. And there at 8:15 Baby Ollie arrived.
I didn’t feel the same HELL YEAH euphoria I felt with the other two. I just wasn’t as ready, didn’t have as much energy this time around. I don’t really feel like I deserve credit for kicking labor’s ass a third time. Cue trombones. But I DID feel much more of a bond with my baby right off the bat than before so that was really nice. It usually takes me awhile to shake the pregnancy funk I live in. He latched on right away and nursed like a champ. I ate the worst chicken sandwich I’ve ever encountered and we headed upstairs to get settled into our room. And that is about it for Ollie’s birth story. More chapters to come….
Sad trombones
There is a very good reason I haven’t been publishing my blog posts lately. That reason is my youngest child due in approximately 9 weeks. Initially I was all set to blog this pregnancy. Think of the memories! Then about halfway through I remembered fucking hell I hate being pregnant I don’t want to remember this. If I’d blogged my first pregnancy the Weebles would be an only child.
People that haven’t had children yet shouldn’t even be around people like me when I’m pregnant. And the kicker is that I have totally blessed to have normal, complication free pregnancies. There isn’t a damn thing wrong with me except that I’m knocked up. No gestational diabetes, no preterm labor, no shots every day, no bed rest. Yet… somehow still *so* miserable. I have to constantly practice deep breathing to not lose my mind thinking about how many days are left. I am apparently horribly horrible at being uncomfortable. For starters, I’m huge. So huge that it hurts to wear clothes huge. When I stand up from sitting or lying down my entire frame has to readjust so I hobble for the first ten steps or so. If I don’t drink enough water then I have super uncomfortable BH contractions. But if I drink TOO much water that causes them too. And of course when you factor in the “size of a BOWLING BALL” (thanks for *that* description online pregnancy site) child parked on my bladder plus the 100+ ounces of water I drink a day you end up with having to get up *see above* to use the bathroom every ten minutes. Bonus points if the child kicks me just right as I’m rushing there.
The position of this child is different than my first two and it is making those “cute little kicks and flutters” feel more like he is carving his way out of prison with a rusty spoon. I will say though that several maladies that I have had issues with in the past have not been bothering me much lately and that is a blessing. The scar tissue on my side from my last pregnancy hasn’t been acting up like my midwife predicted it might. I had a really tough time with SPD during my second trimester but that has inexplicably seemed to taper off here at the end. And heartburn, which was the bane of my existence the first two times, hasn’t been an issue lately either. Then again, I still have a long way to go. There is nobody on the planet that welcomes labor more than I do. Pain meds? HA! I’m so damn thrilled to be winding up the 40 long weeks of feeling like crap that I am downright giddy to hurt like hell for a few hours. Then they hand me the little baby and I think… eh that wasn’t so bad. We could do that again?
