Early Arrival

On Aug. 14, I had my regular weekly check up. My ob thought I looked "puffy" and she was concerned about my blood pressure. So she sent me to the hospital (labor and delivery) to be monitored. "More than likely," she told me, "you'll be home in a couple hours. But if you have to have the baby, you're at 37 weeks, which is term, so everything will be fine."

All I could think about was all the crap I had left to do at work. I wasn't nervous or upset about the possibility of actually having Baby Starr because I didn't think that was even in the realm of possibility. And sure enough it wasn't. That day.

The nurses at the hospital scoffed at my ob/nurse practicioner (spell?) who had sent me to the hospital. I was fine, she was nuts, etc. So off Omar and I went to home. We went out to dinner with my parents that night, watched the Red Sox game and just had a typical Friday night.

Saturday morning, I woke up at quarter of six. I had had a tough time sleeping that night. My back had been bothering me and my hips were sore. I had probably gotten up seven or eight times to pee since I'd gone to be at ten or ten thirty.

When I woke up, Omar woke up with me. I told him I didn't feel right. "I don't feel right. My back, my hips. Something's not right."

"What's wrong?" he says.

"I don't know. I have to pee again. Then I'm going to try to get some more sleep."

The words were not even out of my mouth, I didn't even have a leg out of the bed. My water broke.

It scared the fuck out of me. There is no other delicate was to put it. It scared me to death. Baby Starr was not due for another three weeks. Baby Starr was also breech and I had a C section scheduled for Aug 28 just in case Baby Starr did not turn around by my next appointment.

I didn't have a bag packed for the hospital. My desk at work was a mess. My house was a mess. We didn't even a mattress for the crib yet, for God's sake. We were about to start a heat wave and the weather people had been freaking out for days about it. In short, I was not ready for Baby Starr to be born.

When I got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom, I felt my first contraction. I told Omar, "I think I'm having a contraction."

During this whole thing, he had started to strip the sodden, amniotic soaked sheets off the bed and he was frantically trying to find my cell phone so he could call my ob. I told him I was taking a shower.

"You're what?"

"I'm taking a shower. I'm covered in amniotic fluid. I can't go to the hospital like this. I'm. Taking. A. Shower."

The truth was, I felt sticky from the amniotic fluid, but I also desperately did not want to go to the hospital and have my picture continuously taken with serious bed head.

My contractions at that point (before the shower) were five minutes apart. By the time I got out of the shower, dressed, threw some things in a bag, and got out to the car, maybe twenty minutes had passed since my water broke. My ob was not on call that weekend and Omar had been given the number for the ob who was. My contractions, by the time we got in the car, were four minutes apart and getting more painful. I was starting to panic, especially when the on call ob's answering service put us on hold.

It was a ten minute drive to the hospital. Contractions were getting stronger. I was still on hold with the answering service. Omar pulled into the emergency room parking lot and we waddled our way into the ER. Where there was no one around. I had to ring the bell twice to get someone to come get us. The whole time, I'm still leaking amniotic fluid. And had been since I got out of the shower, so the shower had pretty much been pointless.

We get up stairs around twenty to seven. Right before shift change. I can't tell you how much fun that was. My contractions are getting more painful, I'm in tears, and the nurses are looking at me like I'm crazy when I ask them things like the following:

"Why do my thighs hurt?"
"That's labor. There's probably pressure on your sciatic nerve."

"Why does my back hurt?"
"That's just part of labor."

And when I tell them, "It wasn't supposed to be this way. The baby's not due for another three weeks. The baby's breech. We don't even have a crib mattress yet! I'm scared," they ignore me and tell me to breathe through the pain.

Breathe through the pain, MY ASS. That was probably the most painful experience I've ever had.

The nurse did an ultrasound to confirm the breech, but then tells me they're going to have to wait for the doctor to confirm the breech status before they can make any decisions. I tell the nurse to get this kid out of me NOW. Omar is holding my hand, I'm crying. They start an IV and I can't have any pain meds because if the baby is breech, that's an automatic C section and they'll give me a spinal then.

So contractions. No pain meds. No freaking doctor as of yet.

Finally, sometime after seven but before seven thirty, the doctor shows up and does an ultra sound. She tells me, "Oh, your baby is breech."

Then everything starts to move quickly. Someone hands Omar scrubs. They tuck my hair into a paper hat. Then they wheel me down the hall to the operating room. Omar can't come in yet until they give me the spinal. I start to have a contraction and they have to wait on the spinal till it passes.

Once they give you the spinal, you immediately go numb from the waist down. You can't feel pain, but you can feel them digging around in there. They let Omar in before they make the incision and he sits with me while they open me up. I feel tugging and stretching and pressure and all sorts of nastiness.

Then I hear, "It's a boy!"

And my son is born.