Saturday July 19
I woke up just after midnight with what I felt to be my first "real" contractions. They were similar to Braxton Hicks because my stomach became so tight, but different because they were quite painful. When they kept waking me up I decided to keep track of how frequently they were coming. I realized they were about ten minutes apart, but they stopped just in time for me to get an hour or two of sleep before I needed to get ready for my last shower! All I could think about as I was having those contractions was how I was going into labor and that I would be missing my shower that my family had put so much work into!
But everything worked out--I made it to my shower (that was so wonderful and perfect!) and I kept having these contractions throughout the day but they were just random and at least bearable. I was worried about going to sleep that night because I knew it would be similar to my many other sleepless nights (before it was due to discomfort, now it was just those darn contractions!). I was right.
Sunday July 20
Another night of inconsistent, but frequent contractions made me one tired girl. I went to church and I was having a few contractions an hour.
Throughout the rest of the day I was still having these contractions, but again, they were inconsistent. And painful, oh so painful.
Around 8:00pm we decided to start keeping track--so in the notes on my phone I made a list of times marking each contraction from 8:03pm to 6:47am. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep and neither did Jeff because of my moaning every so many minutes. (These are screenshots of the times of my contractions...it was a long night...)
Monday July 21
I was totally miserable and getting a few minutes of sleep at a time is an exhausting experience. I finally told Jeff to go upstairs and sleep on the couch because there was nothing he could do to help me and he needed some sleep. I had called the nurse sometime in the middle of the night and she didn't really tell me anything that was extremely helpful. I knew the hospital wouldn't admit me unless my contractions were between 3-5 minutes apart and continually getting more painful. My contractions were so close to this, but they just didn't seem quite close enough yet.
But they were so painful so finally I decided to construct a text I would make my dad send to the doctor I was supposed to have an appointment with that afternoon (he actually knew him and I had never met him). I wrote the long text telling the doctor of my situation and then waited until it reached 6am to wake my dad so he could send it. He sent it and Dr. Jacob wrote back almost immediately. He told me to wait another hour and see if things get better, if they got worse I should go into labor and delivery. They were getting worse and my contractions were now 3-4 minutes apart. I was in so much pain and so tired I felt sick. My dad and husband gave me a priesthood blessing (which made me less nervous) then we put my stuff in the car and headed to the hospital.
We got to the hospital around 7am and it was pretty smooth checking in because we had been there a week or so before because of "decreased fetal movement" (Lucy wasn't moving as much as she had been, but she ended up being fine). The nurse hooked me up to the little machine and checked to see if I was dilated at all. I ended up being at a 1 and 90% effaced. (She actually had to go get another nurse to examine me because she couldn't find my cervix--it was extremely thinned out). They said they would keep me for an hour and if I had progressed at all they wouldn't send me home. Much to my dismay I hadn't budged. And the contractions were getting more painful, but they weren't that close together anymore.
They gave me a shot of morphine for the pain and told me to go rest. Dr. Jacob stopped by and said that there was no need to go to my appointment later because they had already checked me out, but if anything changed by the time it rolled around I was still welcome to go. We were a little disappointed and I felt so defeated, convinced I was in a for a longgg three or more weeks.
I tried eating a little and drinking lots of water. When we got home Jeff took an ambien and went straight to bed. So I wouldn't bother him I stayed up in bed with my mom and tried to rest. I got short increments of sleep but the morphine shot didn't seem to be helping. I was totally out of it, but my sweet mom just watched as I was tried to fight through the pain. As the time got closer I knew I had to go to my doctor's appointment by slight chance I had progressed a tiny bit. The contractions were getting hard to breathe through as Jeff and I sat in the waiting room for our appointment. I'm sure people were quite concerned for me, but I was hurting too much to care.
Dr. Jacob came in and examined me and as he was doing so was trying to let me down easy. He kept saying, "you know sometimes this can go on for quite some time, so just be prepared..." But then the look on his face changed and he was SO excited to tell me that I had reached a FOUR. You could tell he was surprised and told me I was definitely ready to be checked in to the hospital. Jeff got emotional when Dr. Jacob told us we would be having our baby that very night! And I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with relief. She was really coming!! We had hoped and prayed our baby girl would come early but we could have never dreamed she would be this early.
Luckily Jeff and I had left my stuff in the car so we were all ready to go. We were both so nervous and excited as we walked out to the car and drove to the hospital. I was still in pain but it almost felt better knowing she was on her way. We called our family and told them this was it!
// part two to follow //
