PAIGE
I reached thirty-nine weeks and did what every hugely pregnant mom does at the end: I sat around and waited. People told me to “watch for signs,” but what were the signs? Nothing felt right in the first place. I felt pain constantly. My hips, knees, back, and feet were always hurting. I also had a few spurts of Braxton Hicks contractions, which gave me pains that actually frightened me a little bit. Not to mention this baby had no more room to grow. With every kick or jab of the elbow, I could feel my skin stretching to its limits. Every day brought a different ache, ailment, or mysterious “sign of labor,” so after a while, I just rested on the fact that this baby would come at her own time. I went to my appointments, answering the same questions at check-in that I did on my first visit, with the same diagnosis: “no changes, just hang in there.”
On August 22, Josh and I went to a barbecue outside of Building 62. People couldn’t believe I had not gone into labor yet. I just shrugged my shoulders and ate a fourth scoop of ice cream. After the barbecue, Josh and I went back to our room. I sat down for a few minutes, and my ankles and feet started to swell at an alarming rate. My skin was so stretched that I feared I would tear it open if I walked too fast or turned too sharply. I strongly questioned whether I had been stung by something or was having a reaction to something I ate (in both feet at the same time? I told you I was clueless). I tried to elevate my legs and relax, but it didn’t go away. What else could happen to my body at this point? Nothing worked, so we just went to bed. Around three in the morning, I woke up with horrible pain in my lower back. It was a radiating pain that went all the way to the back of my knees. The pain was so bad that I was afraid to lie down because I wasn’t sure I could get back up. I walked around quietly, trying not to wake Josh. The pain came in waves but it was consistently taking my breath away. I woke Josh up and told him I was in labor. The scene afterward was comical: Josh sat up and put his glasses on then looped a duffel bag around his neck while wheeling around frantically trying to pack his things. I was determined to get a shower before we went to labor and delivery. However, getting in the hot water made the mild contractions level up to severe contractions. I abandoned that plan. It was finally go time! Josh put his legs on and loaded the wheelchair with the hospital bag.
I started down the sidewalk from Building 62 to the hospital with Josh trailing behind. He shouted, “Are you sure you don’t want me to push you?!”
“No!” I yelled back. “You don’t walk fast enough!” Josh had just learned how to pick up a pacifier off the floor without dropping Baby Flour; there was no way he was going to be able to safely push me down a hill into the maternity ward. And at the rate I was moving, all Josh needed to worry about was getting the overnight bag down the hill and praying that I didn’t have the baby in the parking garage.
By the time we made it to the maternity floor, I was a sweaty mess. They checked me in at four centimeters dilated, and I met the unfamiliar doctor who would deliver my baby. We called our family to let them know our baby girl was on her way.
My labor experience is one I won’t forget anytime soon. I was okay for a good portion of the labor, pushing through the pain by thinking about all the volleyball drills and sprints I had completed in less than ninety seconds. The pain would come in waves and put tension on my body that was severe enough to stress my vital signs. Then, my labor stalled out and I needed Pitocin. With Pitocin, I could no longer feel contractions coming, so they surprised me like I was being stabbed. I couldn’t breathe during the contractions, and I was seeing stars after each one. They were coming every two minutes on the dot. Eventually, I started throwing up and I begged for an epidural. The epidural was administered, but I asked to not be totally numb. I was entering hour nine and I did not want to tack on more time than necessary by adding a
