Virginia's Birth Story: Monday Morning (Part 1/6)

Announcing little Virginia Mae McCants is here!

A large 8 lbs 11 oz and 21 inches. Large and In-Charge!

This is going to not only be a multi-part, but a multi-day birth story.

Luckily for everyone, it didn't take multiple days to get her out, but it did take multiple days to get her home.

Let's begin.

The Morning of July 21 around 4 AM, my dreams were being interrupted by weird painful things --an event which isn't that odd, only because the last 2 months I'd been waking up in pain to rush to the bathroom. So I did all those things and went back to bed. Also, Mom and I had made the famous Eggplant Parmesan the Friday before, hoping it would put me into labor.  After multiple servings, nothing but lots and lots of gas, so I assumed that aforementioned pains were gas pains and tried to get back to sleep.

When I finally acknowledged that they were kinda like crampy pains, I thought I might want to give them a little credit and start timing them. But even then they weren't anything consistent and were lasting about 45 seconds and random lengths apart.

Fast forward a few hours, after telling Charlie I was having pains that I was tracking, he then said "Ok" and went back to sleep. Good thing he was keeping real easy-going. I got on the exercise ball and checked e-mail, got on Facebook, etc. They kept coming but still, nothing too serious. Washed some dishes, coming a little quicker but nothing I couldn't handle.

About 7:00 I called the midwife on duty at the hospital and told her I thought I was having some contractions and asked what should I do. She said I could go into the midwives' Women's Clinic for a "Labor Check"so I called the office at 8:30 to get them to fit me in.

Not long after that, MM got up and wanted breakfast, so Charlie made me some eggs, cheese, and avocado on toast. At this time, I couldn't eat while having these pains, so I thought that it could mean something for real was happening (a common barometer? No?)

Called the midwives' office whose earliest appointment was 11:00 am, which was still a few hours away. I had always thought second pregnancies were so super fast you might not even make it to he hospital. Didn't seem like this was going to be one of those cases. So we dropped MM off at Charlie's parent's house and made laps around their neighborhood tracking these suspected contractions. They weren't anything I couldn't handle, but not the most comfortable either.

At 11:00, we made it to the midwives' office, and after checking in (side note, I'd somehow gained like 4 pounds in a week, swell...), was told we (I) was a little more than 4 cm dilated with a "bulging" bag --now please let that imagine sink in.

We did a little time on the monitor to make sure my girl was handling these contractions well, which of course she was. The midwife told us to go get some lunch. Also, she would call the midwife at the hospital to tell her we were "in the wings" and to expect us sometime that afternoon.

Part 2 coming soon!