My Labour Story: Part One... No, I didn't pee myself, thanks.

I had been feeling overly sleepy all day. Had meant to Skype with a friend from Ontario, and ended up falling asleep in a chair a few times. I had finally cleaned up the miscellaneous items and boxes that were at the side of my bed since our move in February, and it took all the energy I had. I was 36 weeks pregnant that Friday. Babies are considered full term from 37 to 40 weeks.

I ended up laying back down and didn't get to Skype. The Hubs came home from work and we chatted for a bit and watched a bit of TV, but I had to come up to bed. I think I may have coloured for a bit, napped, read, napped, and just fought to get up to go the washroom. The poor Hubs ended up spending HOURS assembling a porch glider on the living room floor. He didn't end up in bed until 1:30am or so.

That weekend we were going to install the car seat, pack the hospital bags. Our hospital tour was scheduled for the upcoming Tuesday. The Universe laughed at us.

I had been to the washroom and was finally falling back into that crippling-hip-breast-pain side laying position on our shitty, faulty Kingsdown mattress from Sears (post to follow, but Sears sucks ass and their customer service is horrible). Sleep was light. And my water broke.

My immediate reaction: W.T.F.?

I hopped up (it was, quite possibly, the fastest I moved my entire pregnancy) and proceeded to penguin waddle to the bathroom (easy-to-clean tile floors and all) as the water continued. I think I passed my mucous plug. I tried to pee. And then I remembered I was supposed to note the time and sit down, so I did on the floor. More water puddled out, and it actually felt surreal, like I was dreaming.

Now, because I had been so   energetic   vivacious   seizing the day   exhausted the days before, I was ripe for a shower. The concept of 72 doctors and nurses all over my unshowered hoo-ha for the next whoever-knows-how-many hours was not appealing. I did know though that I needed to go to the hospital at some point for the required antibiotics for Group B Strep once my water broke (or at least, that is what one resident told us previously).

It was 3:20am on May 25th, 2013.

I decided I would slowly have a fast shower (lol) and then go down the two flights of stairs to wake the Hubs and likely scare the shyte out of him with the news.

Waking him was cute. I was in my shower robe, and I said really calmly (and probably very cute-ly, if I do say so myself) "Hi hon, my water broke".

He sprung up into this crazy feral on-all-fours position (after clarifying with me that I was not, in fact, joking). I think the two hours of sleep, and four weeks earliness, sent him into a wee bit of a tailspin. It was really quite adorable and an incredible shift, because he is ALWAYS the calm one and I am ALWAYS the crazy/dramatic/high-strung one.

One of us realized we were supposed to call the hospital, so we called labour & delivery. The nurse said that it wasn't "alarm bells and whistles" but to head down to the hospital to be checked out. We tried to gather the few baby things I had set out, some clothes and socks for me, bedding and stuff for him, and tried to proceed calmly. It didn't feel like we were in a hurry, but he was quite absent minded and very cute. I had an eerie calm about me. Perhaps a little relief that the horribly uncomfortable interpretive-dance-ninja in my inner loins was finally going to be sprung free into the world. Or maybe I was just too tired to think. Could have been either.

Our dogs knew something was up instantly and they were barking their fool heads off outside at 4am. We made our way to the hospital around 4:30am or so. Registered at the emergency desk, then the Hubs wheeled me up to the labour floor.

There, we were promptly ignored and put into a group exam room. The nurse at the desk acted like I was foolish for being there and let us wait until nearly 5:30am before tending to us. From there, she checked with a little litmus-like paper strip to see if my waters were in fact amniotic fluid that had broken. She genuinely appeared surprised when the strip registered a deep purple, confirming that baby had really and actually sprung a leak.



THEN she stopped being a bitch and paged the OB (Obstetrician).

Shit was about to get real.

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