Parker's Birth Story PART I

On Friday, May 11^th, Honey and I were looking forward to DaTe NiGhT! Honey had been out of town and we had hardly seen each other and had plans to spend every minute of the upcoming weekend together basking in our last six weeks as DINK’s (dual-income-no-kid’s) and preparing for the arrival of our little baby boy.

Well none of that happened!

Starting around 3 pm that afternoon I began to notice Braxton Hicks contractions. Not a huge deal, I had them before. But over the next few hours they started becoming more frequent and some what consistent. Hmmm, that didn’t quite feel right. I asked Honey to time them with me, so we sat on the couch and time contractions for an hour. They were between 5 and 8 minutes apart. Is this normal we wondered? He’s not due for 5.5 more weeks.

I suggested that we google it! Honey said no that would just give us all kinds of crazy answers and worry us. Well I had to pee (big surprise!) so I left the room but when I returned, guess who was on google checking out our situation and basically freaking out about what he was reading? Yup and as soon as I walked back into the living room Honey announced that we were calling our doctor immediately! Surely it was nothing. After all he’s not due for 5.5 more weeks.

The doctor said to come on in. They determined it was false labor and gave me three shots of trybutalene (OUCH by the way!), watched me to confirm they had stopped the contractions and then sent us home. After a stop at IHOP – mama was starving and nothing else is open at 12:30 AM – we headed home. Some date night huh? Well we laughed about it and thought it was nothing. Like I said, he’s not due for 5.5 more weeks.

The next morning at 5 am I woke up with a deep, deep, pain-ish feeling in my abdomen. It happened again about an hour and a half later. And then an hour after that. And then 30 minutes after that. And then again 20 minutes after that and… yes these pain-ish feelings were getting more and more frequent. And each one was getting more and more painful until I was almost doubled over with each one. What was going on? He’s not due for 5.5 more weeks!

(I know you experienced child birthers are reading between the lines here. These were no Braxton Hicks contractions. I now know that these were real contractions! Next time I’ll know that a lot sooner – that is a feeling you don’t easily forget!)

We called the doctor and we now laugh at her reaction to our phone call. She told us “first timers” to come on back to the hospital but not to worry, it’s probably nothing! Just a reaction to the exam from the night before she said (uh huh). We went back to the hospital and quickly learned that I was in labor. Say what? Come again? Can you repeat that? I’m in WHAT? Listen here, HE’S NOT DUE FOR 5.5 MORE WEEKS!!!

The doctor said that this time they wouldn’t help my labor along or prevent my labor from progressing but that instead they would let Mother Nature take her course and see what happened. I was dilated to a 3 and was admitted to the hospital at 12:30 pm. At 4:30 pm I was dilated to a 5 and the doctor proudly announced that we were having a baby that day. As in today, we asked? Yes! TODAY!! We didn’t have our car seat. (You have to have that to leave the hospital.) We hadn’t finished our birthing classes. (We had been to two out of five.) We hadn’t had our “big” shower in my home town. (Thankfully we did have a wonderful shower in our town the week before.) I hadn’t hired a doula (I had interviewed two and selected one but hadn’t called her yet.) I hadn’t finished the nursery… because he's not due for 5.5 more weeks...

There were so many things running through our minds but the biggest thought of all was WE ARE HAVING A BABY TODAY!! … And he’s 5.5 weeks early!!

Wow, writing this is bringing back all the memories and emotions we experienced that day. The biggest? SHOCK! Followed by complete ELATION! We were so excited to meet our baby boy no matter how early he was going to come!

Well to spare you a super long post, let me chunk this story up into a couple segments. Stay tuned for Part II – his delivery and our realization that he wasn’t coming home right away...Until then, here is a picture of the star of the story, Parker James, and I taken earlier this week. Love him!