False Alarm

It's been a crazy few days so I thought I'd go ahead and document the "false alarm" for our son so that one day I can go back and read it to laugh (though I cannot do that now).

Tuesday (11/26) We have been battling out heater for the past few weeks. It is over 12 years old and we knew that it was falling apart but we had no idea how far gone it was until this day. We woke up and the heat was out. I waited to manually restart it in case the technicians wanted to come out and check. Out of all the days for it to go out, this day was wet and cold! We were supposed to have the international students over for "Star Wars" Marathon and ordering Chinese, but we had to cancel because the heat would not stay on, even after manually restarting it, and the repair guys couldn't fix it because of all the rain. We took advantage of our space heaters and electric fireplace, went out to Applebees for their 99 cent kids meals and headed to our friends' homes to keep warm until bed time. We returned from our friends' home and I found ANOTHER LICE ON EMMA'S HEAD. I know you think you may have misread that, but you did not. After 4 treatments and a prescription treatment, we still found 1 single momma bug moving around on Emma's head.

Wednesday (11/27) We called Nate's dad to inform him that we would not be coming to their home for Thanksgiving because of the lice we found, there was also 2-3 on Maddy's head the next morning, so we settled in to spending Thanksgiving in our home in the cold :-( Nate was off work for Thanksgiving break so he watched the girls while I went to my 37 week (thought I was 36 weeks and 6 days) appointment. At 2:40 I began having contractions and by the time I went back to see my doctor (4pm) I discovered that my contractions were constantly 8-10 minutes apart but not intense. She checked me, said I was 1-2 cm dilated and told me to head to the hospital if they got 5 minutes apart (which is the recommended time to enter the hospital for mothers of subsequent children).  By the time I got home, they were starting to be 5 mins apart so at 6:30 we had a friend come over to watch the girls and we headed to the hospital. We called the family and they began heading to meet us. With our history with our daughters, we have always had fast deliveries that started at 5 minutes apart and not intense and ended in 5-16 hours so we were ready to go! (For details on these stories, please feel free to read: Maddy's Birth Story and Emma's Birth Story)

We arrived at the hospital, filled out the info, and they began to monitor me. By this time he had dropped and we were dilated 3 cm. They do not consider you in active labor till 4 cm so they told me they would monitor me for 1 hr and then admit me if I made progress. I began to walk around to try to get things going and warned them of my other two deliveries. My contractions were getting a bit more intense and were at 3 mins apart. After about 2 hours they returned, checked me, and admitted me. We thought we were home free! I checked in to my room and got the run down on the epidural process and how they would proceed to watch and monitor me. By this time, it was about 10:30 pm. We all settled down to rest for a bit, most grandparents had arrived by then, and we waited. Before I checked into the room my doctor had said that since he wasn't technically full term till midnight that they would not do anything to help me progress until after midnight. Around 11:30 the nurse came in and checked on me and said that they may end up sending me home in the morning so that I should just try to rest because my body would do what it was supposed to do whether I was moving or not (which goes completely against all the other doctors and nurses advice I have heard).  They also took back their previous statement and said even if we were still active after midnight that they were not going to do anything to help progress labor. We all fell asleep for a bit but at 2 am I was wide awake. I felt like I was regressing, which has never happened to me, and I was struggling with great disappointment.

I knew that this wasn't the best timing for his arrival but all the prep had gotten me so excited. Now I realized that this was false labor, which I have never had, and I began to beat myself up. I had inconvenienced my family by making them drive 2.5 hours to come see me and nothing was going to happen, I had embarrassed myself by assuming that this was real, I had put hope in my son's arrival and all the medical staff around me knew he wasn't coming. (I know that these are all silly and that my family did not feel inconvenienced but I am just documenting the feelings I felt.) At 3 am the nurse came in and I told her I wanted to go home. She agreed that nothing was going to happen and told me she'd ask the doctor to come in. The doctor came in, checked me and said I had made no progress and that he had in fact gone by up to a -3 position whereas he had dropped upon our arrival. They wheeled me out to the car and I tried not to lose it. The nurse said not to return until the contractions were intense enough that I had to breath through them. We arrived home at 3:30 and was all went to bed.

Thursday (11/28) I felt like I was in a fog! How could I have been so wrong? I felt betrayed by my body, that has never done this before. I was angry! I was exhausted! I was grieving my return home without my baby. I was grieving the fact that I was convinced the Lord had planned this out perfectly with family all being there and everything falling in to place (our heat went out so that we would want to go somewhere but then the girls got lice which kept us from traveling and things were starting slow so that family could be a part). I didn't inform anyone of the final outcome cause I was so disappointed. Maddy ran into my room yelling, "I have to find mommy" and I realized I had to snap out of it. I got up and began fixing our Thanksgiving meal. It wasn't what we planned but it would be something.

It was a super lazy day around the house and the kerosine heater made it nice and toasty. We put the girls to bed and then around 9 pm, as we sat down for a family game of "Bang!" the contractions, which had been sporadic all day, began again. They were 3 mins. apart so after we played and watched a Christmas movie I headed to bed, convinced I would wake up in the middle of the night to deliver a baby. They were getting more intense and by 3 am they were getting more uncomfortable. My expectations were again wrong and when I woke up at 7 I realized that I was awakening to disappointment yet again.

Friday (11/29) My parents left this morning to return home and the day has been pretty uneventful. I have been trying to just drink in my little girls and ignore the disappointment when it creeps up. I am aware that this is normal. I am also aware that I was arrogant to think that my body would operate according to my expectations only. I am aware that I have to stop expecting him to come "soon" because that makes it harder. I am trying to go back to living my day to day life before Wednesday. I am ignoring any contractions until they start to hurt. It's disappointing but one day, I will bring home my son and I hope that there will be a future post for that.