Birth Story Part 2

If you missed part 1, check in out here:

So we were walking up the steps of the hospital with feelings of excitement and anticipation. Was this it? Were we going to be enter these doors as a couple and leaving as a family? I had a feeling that we were going to be leaving sooner than we planned, but I so wanted this to be it.

We got set up in a triage room and I was hooked up to the monitors. Can I just say that I loved being able to hear my little ones heartbeat the whole time? It was fun to watch his heart rate while chilling it was in between 120's and 130's but whenever he was moving around it jumped up into the one 150's. So cool!

My last doctors appointment was a week ago and at that time I had nothing going on, no dilation, and my cervix was still hard and closed. I was praying that what I had been feeling the past few days were making some sort of progress. I had. I was at 2cm! Woohoo! Things were moving in the right direction!

They took me off the monitors and we started walking. We walked for almost an hour. That small loop around labor and delivery and maternity is fairly tiny and boring after awhile. Although seeing the cute itty bitty babies in the nursery made it a little better. :-) I was almost in tears when we stopped to look at them the first time. Soon one of those were going to be MY baby!

We went back to the room and got hooked up again. The nurse checked me and I was almost at 3 cm and 50% effaced. Things were progressing! My contractions were still steady coming every 3-5 minutes, but was still totally manageable. They gave us 2 options. I could be admitted and they could continue to monitor me every hour and I could keep walking the halls, or I could go home until the contractions strengthen.

Since I wanted go as natural as possible, I chose to go home. That way I could labor as much as possible at home and eat something because I was starving! the nurse said she would be surprised if I wasn't back there by nighttime.

Kevin dropped me off and went into work with me promising to call him as soon as things picked up. I cleaned a few more things around the house and tried to make sure that everything was in order as possible. Well Kevin's co-teachers and principle were shocked to see him in, so they sent him home to be with me. We decided to head back out to the mall to walk. The walking helped to stregthen the contractions a bit, but not to the point where I had to breath through them. When we got back home I took a nice warm bath to relax and hoped that it too would help things along.

No such luck. By the time we went to bed the steady contractions I had all day were fading away. My dreams of today being the day were crushed as I fell asleep...