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Guys. I was desperate — absolutely desperate — to go into labor. On Thursday of last week, my due date, I saw my OB. I was only 2 centimeters dilated and not at all effaced. I was incredibly disappointed that the next words out of his mouth were that we would be scheduling an induction for 41 weeks. To be honest, I don’t think I would have gone through with the induction, but the pressure of hearing that word was enough to send me into a near-panic.
I was discouraged and in so. much. pain. I could barely walk. The suggestion of sex to induce labor (which was made by my doctor twice), was met with a half-hearted smile from me and a “yeah I can barely move, let alone have sex,” comment. So I decided to do the next best thing — mall-walk with Ari.
My parents ended up coming into town for a family emergency Thursday evening, but they weren’t around on Friday. So Ari and I went to the mall by ourselves (I know, not necessarily the smartest move going solo). I pushed him in his umbrella stroller and just walked and walked and walked. After just about 15 minutes, I started feeling some pain in my lower back/tailbone area. It lasted for like a minute and then would go away for about 10 minutes before returning. I brushed it off, thinking that I was imagining things; but continued to walk.
After about an hour of (super slow) walking, I had to stop during the pains. I just stood there, gripping Ari’s stroller, holding myself up. People at the mall were just staring at me; not certain what was going on (truthfully, people were surprised I was 40+ weeks pregnant. So they probably had no idea). I called Chad and told him what was going on and told him I was stopping by the grocery store + then heading home.
I continued to have ‘contractions’ and to time them. They were consistently about 5-7 minutes apart, with no breaks. I called my mom and dad and they decided to come back to our house from where they had gone. But until they got back to our house, and until Chad came home from work, I was solo with Ari — just laboring away.
I’m so grateful the contractions were relatively short, because that was the only way I held my s**t together with a toddler in my face. I still didn’t think I was really laboring because I had no telltale signs of what I remembered as “labor”:
No mucous plug; no diarrhea; no swelling/contracting of my upper abdomen at all; no clear-as-day signs like I had with Ari. None of it.
But I continued to track it. And continued to have a “normal” evening.
We went to dinner at a local Thai restaurant. I made sure not to overeat, just in case. I would pause once in awhile for a more intense contraction. And even after dinner, we went to the store to get Chad some snacks ‘just in case’ we were in for a long night. We didn’t even get home til after 8:30. Chad put Ari down for bed; I took a shower; contractions kept coming. I tried to let them slide but eventually they became intense enough to where I was no longer able to speak through them.
And then I had to change positions to get comfortable during them… which happened to be in a modified childs’ pose on the floor. And finally, after my parents went to bed, I told Chad that he needed to come down and help me through them.
The contractions were 2 minutes apart for about 30 minutes. Then they became inconsistent… 2 minutes. 3 minutes. 5 minutes. 7 minutes. 3 minutes. 10 minutes. 2 minutes. 3 minutes. But they were consistently occurring. And painful enough that I was standing up and leaning forward against a wall to make it through them.
I decided to call my OB. Chad was unsure if it was ‘time,’ but I was sure that my contractions were happening for long enough to warrant a call. At 12:30 AM on Saturday, my OB answered and then I had a contraction. I couldn’t talk to him. And he knew it was time. And told us to go to the hospital and get checked out. So we took a half hour to gather up our belongings and pack up our car (ie. get the car seats loaded back in since I had cleaned/vacuumed out the car).
We arrived at the ER at 1:30AM on Saturday and had to go through the main entrance, not Labor + Delivery triage. Apparently the ER said that I was the fifth person trying to get to L&D that night — and it was a full moon! Whaaaat? Should have known…
Full moon. OF COURSE. Should’ve known that’s when it would happen! My gut totally suspected you were in the real deal labor, even when you were doubting it on Twitter.