The Birth- leading up to going to the hospital

If I don't write, I might go insane, so I'm going to try.  I'm only roughly 90 some hours post-partum.  So bare with me.

So, yeah, we had a baby boy!  One who is currently inside a Baby Hawk carrier against my chest who has been asleep for a while.  He is great. 

So for me labor was not like they teach you in class or what you read about in the books.  Generally labor contractions start mildly and far apart, sometimes 30 minutes apart.  For me the mild ones started 2 to 5 minutes apart, which totally made me think they couldn't be early labor contractions and I was freaked out.  Brent went to work early on Sunday and I called various people like my doula, my friend, Manda, Brent, and the nurse midwife unit.  The "experts" of course were like, "probably just those pre-labor contractions," but I knew something was different.  If I had listened to my instincts I would have said, "look people!  I'm having a baby soon!" 

People were obsessed with the mucus plug and whether or not I was bleeding.  I never saw that goddamn mucus plug and only spotted a little until close to the end.  I guess people were used to the woman in early labor who thinks she's farther along than she really is.  It was a little scary not knowing what was going on and being told that birth could still be days away.  "Days away?!  I will die before then!"

So Manda came over with Chinese food, and I ate a bunch, which was good, it was the last time I felt like eating much until after the birth.  We timed my contractions, which were getting more painful and they were still 2-5 minutes apart and about 1-2 minutes long, which means about 40% of the time I was in pain.  And these had been going on since about 8 am, and Manda got me food around 2 pm.  Manda also read cracked.com to me and some jokes from Lake Woebegone to keep me calm.  Around 4 pm it was clear that these were going somewhere and we called the doula and called Brent to come home.  The doula put a TENS unit on me, which helped a little and kept me moving and changing position to keep the contractions coming and doing their work.  Brent got home and we paced the apartment after I refused to go outside for a walk, I was in no shape to be in public. 

The contractions got more intense and were still 2-5 minutes apart.  I laid down in bed with Brent for a bit and cried, we also held each other and I moaned through contractions and we knew we were going to have a baby soon. 

At about 8 pm we headed for the hospital.  Hospital insisted I be dropped off at the entrance, but I wanted to walk in with everyone.  The hospital is big, so we walked and had many contractions before we reached the right unit.