What a night Max's birthday was!!! Lets rewind a bit: At 37 weeks my OB was concerned that because of my gestational diabetes, that Max was going to be HUGE, so she wanted to get things started if they would. I was dilated to about a 2, but nothing was effaced or softening, so she stripped my membranes and told me to go home and do whatever I could to start labor. So we did it ALL. I went off roading with Ronnie in our Tahoe, ate pineapple, bounced on a birthing ball, did lots of walking, took Red Raspberry Leaf Tea tablets, and of course, as everyone recommends, did the dead. NOTHING happened. The off roading got me a few light contractions, but as soon as we got home they stopped. Two weeks later, he was still in and Tracy, my OB was out of town, so I had to see the OB I LEAST wanted to see. They had delivered Chloe and I didn't love how they handled things, bedside manner and they were ROUGH. I got to the appointment and they were surprisingly pleasant and attentive, but they did have someone shadowing them....I won't make assumptions :P Anywho, while the mannerisms were different, they were still ROUGH. Like I wanted to cry, and then I was spotting and sore. However unpleasant the appointment was, my contractions started later that afternoon, so in the end, it was a blessing. The big man definitely knows what he's doing, even when it makes absolutely no sense to me at the time! So that was the morning of July 15th, and after that I had uncomfortable contractions about every 20 minutes or so. That night I went out to dinner with some friends and had contractions probably about 10 minutes apart. Close enough that I started keeping track.
Here's Trit and me after that dinner at Texas Roadhouse, in the parking lot. 39 weeks pregnant, with swollen feet and wearing a skirt cause that was the easiest thing to get on! My hips were so sore and loose at this point, I'd been going to physical therapy for a few weeks and couldn't sleep on my side at all. The next day the contractions were on and off, but were very uncomfortable and super annoying. That evening, I decided to take some more Red Raspberry tablets to see if it would help things along. I told Ronnie around 11pm that I was pretty sure we would need to go in in the next little while. He settled in to work on his RC airplane in the garage and I went and took a shower and got ready. The contractions continued to get stronger and closer together, until they were about every 5 minutes and I was stopping to get through them. I told Ronnie it was time, so he jumped in the shower while I gathered a few final things (luckily I had packed everybody's bags weeks before). During this time, my dang contractions stopped! I bounced on the ball, walked around and did everything I could for the next 20 minutes but nothing happened. Then out of no where, they started again, and were only 3-4 minutes apart! So we called my Mom and Ronnie went to wake the girls (it was about 2am at this time), who bolted awake as soon as he said baby brother was ready to be born. Chloe was full of questions and talked the whole way to the hospital, while I worked through my contractions as quietly as I could, but they were way worse sitting down. When we finally arrived, my fantastic mother was waiting in the parking lot to take the girls, so we headed right in....after a few stops for contractions.
Once we got inside, it was dark and quiet, completely the opposite of what I was feeling and it seemed a little eerie because of that. We got to the desk and of course all of the nurses were calm and slow moving, while I felt like everything needed to be moving double time from all the pain I was in. Hospitals are different places in the middle of the night. My girls were both born in the evening, so this was a new experience for me. There was no hustle and bustle, no daylight streaming through windows, no chipper nurses. My nurses were fantastic and kind, but you could tell they were at the end of their shift.
