False Alarm
On Thursday, I had a routine doctor's appointment, the first one where the doctor does an exam to check whether any progress has been made toward labor. He was doing his thing, and suddenly stopped, poked his head up, and said, "Whoa!" (Always nice to hear right at that moment) Then he said that I was 4 cm dilated, that he had his hand on the baby's head, and that I should forget what he had just told me about waiting at home for a couple of hours worth of 5-minute-apart contractions. Instead, he said, I should come to the hospital as soon as we could tell they were 5 minutes apart because things could go pretty quickly. And he added that he didn't think I'd make it to my next appointment in a week.
I called Sam, who was apparently so flustered that he wandered into his next class in a daze and eventually had to turn the students loose for "independent work" in their lab for a while. I went back to work, handed off some things in case I wouldn't make it back, and then attended a lecture that I slipped out of at the very end to get home and get things done. We knew that just being dilated didn't mean I was ready to go into labor immediately, but then I started having contractions that got progressively more frequent, until they were about 6 minutes apart.
Let me tell you--there was a flurry of activity around our house that night. We had thought we'd have about 3 more weeks, and we really needed just another weekend to finish things up, but by now we were afraid we wouldn't even have the whole night. The baby's room was done, but my bag wasn't packed and the room for my parents to stay in was still half full of boxes and tools, with no bed, and their bathroom sink and light weren't connected.
So, we worked until 2:30 that night and tried to get a little sleep, and then on Friday, the baby appeared to change her mind. We still stayed home, just in case, but she seems to have nestled in for a while. Still, I'd be surprised if we made it all the way to her due date on March 10 . . .
Of course, whereas before we had not been at all impatient for her to get here (because there was still so much work to be done), now that we're basically ready, neither of us could sleep this morning because we're so excited for her to come.
I called Sam, who was apparently so flustered that he wandered into his next class in a daze and eventually had to turn the students loose for "independent work" in their lab for a while. I went back to work, handed off some things in case I wouldn't make it back, and then attended a lecture that I slipped out of at the very end to get home and get things done. We knew that just being dilated didn't mean I was ready to go into labor immediately, but then I started having contractions that got progressively more frequent, until they were about 6 minutes apart.
Let me tell you--there was a flurry of activity around our house that night. We had thought we'd have about 3 more weeks, and we really needed just another weekend to finish things up, but by now we were afraid we wouldn't even have the whole night. The baby's room was done, but my bag wasn't packed and the room for my parents to stay in was still half full of boxes and tools, with no bed, and their bathroom sink and light weren't connected.
So, we worked until 2:30 that night and tried to get a little sleep, and then on Friday, the baby appeared to change her mind. We still stayed home, just in case, but she seems to have nestled in for a while. Still, I'd be surprised if we made it all the way to her due date on March 10 . . .
Of course, whereas before we had not been at all impatient for her to get here (because there was still so much work to be done), now that we're basically ready, neither of us could sleep this morning because we're so excited for her to come.
posted by Tara | 9:51 AM
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