Samantha Birth Story - Part 2 - Maybe labor?

On the 22nd I went back to the doctor and was very disappointed to find out that I was a “loose 1cm” instead of a tight one. I knew it was going to be a while longer… Bleh…. But when I stopped at the hobby store on my way home, I started getting more random contractions. These hurt but were not regular.

I got home and let Laurie, our nanny, go home. Then Ellie and I packed up and headed to the grocery store. Not fun! I was contracting and contracting painfully, but not regularly and certainly not having any fun. But I made it and got home to put away all the perishables.

Got Ellie into bed for a nap and I climbed into the hot tub – ahhhhh, relief! I kept having pain on the right side in the middle for some odd reason and climbing into the hot tub just relaxed that. It was just something that seemed to cramp up and didn’t really release and was painful for a long time. Ugh.

The second I climbed out of the hot tub, it hit again, but it calmed down when I climbed in bed. I was so tired so I lay down and read. I read for a while, chatted with my brother Doug and let the contractions get more regular. They got to be about 7 minutes apart and I was starting to get excited again….

Then I called Chris and asked him not to go out after work – I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to watch Ellie with the contractions I was having. It was very hard for me to even put her into bed that afternoon!

By the time he got home at 6ish, I was having 5 minute regular contractions. They hurt, but I could talk through them and do whatever for the most part. By 7:30 or 8 they got to about 3 minutes apart… About the same intensity as they were at the mall so I wasn’t freaking out until I chatting with Heather and Gina from my June board… So I started thinking about calling the doctor about 10. The contractions had been regular for quite a while and weren’t going away.

Chris put Ellie down and we started putting everyone on “alert”. Called Laurie to come watch Ellie and got our bags packed up.

We headed to the hospital at 11:30 and got there about midnight. After getting checked in, they checked me and I was about 2cm dilated and 75% effaced – which was good since I had changed since the morning. So it was off to walk the halls and try to get things going even more….

Mom and dad showed up and the four of us walked the halls for about an hour or more. I had more mucousy show while walking so I was sure things were going on, but unfortunately they weren’t. Back home again with me very upset. More because mom and dad drove up and Laurie had to wake up in the middle of the night to take care of Ellie. And I had to go back to my board and break the bad news – Dos wasn’t coming yet.

We got home at about 3:45am and I was asleep by 4. With lots of bad dreams about contractions. Only to wake and find that I wasn’t dreaming. But I’d go back to sleep and slept through a bunch of them until about 7.