A Tale of Two Labors

One never really knows what labor will be like until you go through it.  Then you experience labor and you expect your second labor to be similar to that of the first.  Or at least I did. 

With Little Man I started having contractions around 3:00pm on a Sunday afternoon.  After hours of Steven tracking each contraction I called the on call doc.  She said if I could walk around just fine I probably wasn't in labor, but if I tried to go to bed at night and couldn't sleep I would need to go to the hospital.  I could walk around just fine so I thought for sure it wasn't real labor.  I really didn't want to be one of those first time moms who make multiple trips to the hospital with false alarms.  So I tried to go to bed.  I tried to go to bed for an hour and a half.  I tried to go to bed until Steven kicked me out and told me we were going.  He got all my stuff, pushed my very pregnant self in the car and very calmly drove me to the hospital. To my surprise I was in labor.  I was only dilated to a 4, but I got the good drugs and sailed through the rest of labor.  In the end I came home with a beautiful baby boy.

Little Miss was a much different story.  I was supposed to be induced with her.  She had her own plans though.  At about 4:00am on the morning I was to be induced, I woke up with gas pains. Those 'gas' pains started coming every 5 minutes.  I began to realize it wasn't gas, but contractions.  Since Little Man's labor was about 15 hours start to finish, I figured I had time.  I got up to pee and had a pee pee pants reenactment.  Only it wasn't pee.  My fluids were beginning to leak.  I decided I was going to shower, get ready, and then get Steven up to drive me to the hospital.  I didn't want to wake him since I just began labor.  That was a good plan until my contractions started coming every two minutes and I could no longer stand in the shower.  This was in a matter of 30 minutes.  The contractions were coming much faster and much stronger than I had experienced with Little Man.  Somehow I managed to dry my hair and get dressed while Steven called his dad to come stay at the house with Little Man. 

Steven's dad arrived about 30 minutes later, and I was having contractions every minute.  Steven helped me to the car and drove like a madman to the hospital.  He was so rattled.  I kept telling him to calm down.  He said he was calm, but when he pulled up to the emergency room, he dropped me off and DROVE AWAY.  As I'm standing at the entrance, I wondering where in the world he was going.  Thankfully a nurse had seen us pull in and wheeled out a wheel chair for me.  Finally Steven came back.  Instead of parking the car in the emergency room parking lot, he pulled all the way around to normal parking and came running like Usain Bolt to me.  He track star days weren't finished though. I never knew wheel chairs could handle speeds over 50 mph, but apparently they can.  It was great that my husband was so interested in getting me to labor and delivery in a timely fashion after the parking fiasco, but he was running so fast he passed the elevators. 

God must have been watching this whole thing because all of a sudden a man appears out of nowhere from inside and elevator and yells, "Sir, Labor and Delivery is this way.  Hop on."  Steven comes to a stop so fast I almost fly out.  He wheels me around and shoves me in the elevator.  I look up to thank the man when I realize it's a parent of one of my former students, AND I work with his wife.  He is cracking up, and I am dying from pain and embarrassment.

We finally got to where we were going.  After the admittance process, I was dilated to a seven.  When the anesthesiologist finally arrived an hour later, I was at a nine.  I was praying it would kick in just in time for the pushing, and it did.  Five minutes before.  Two pushes and Little Miss was out.  I came home with a beautiful baby girl.

If I could choose my labor for Baby #3, I would go with Little Man's plan.  Fifteen hours of slow labor was much, much better than five hours of hard and quick labor.  All I know is we will do yet another run to the hospital and this time I hope my husband remembers how to get to Labor and Delivery and where to park.  On that note, maybe we'll do two practice runs.