It was just another ordinary Tuesday…until our little man was born.
April 10 started out just as most other Tuesdays at our house do with the usual rousing sleepy kids at 8:30 so I can get everyone to their respective places for the day. I was having a few sporadic contractions throughout the morning, but I’d had other mornings like that so I didn’t give it a second thought. I got both kids to school and then headed back to Blake’s school where I was scheduled to help in the media center and his classroom for the morning while Alexandria was at preschool.
I chatted with some of the other moms who were volunteering in the work room, even telling them I’d been having contractions that day but was pretty sure it was nothing to get excited about. Alexandria was born at 36 weeks, 6 days, but Blake had come just five days before his due date so I hated to expect an early delivery. I was 38 weeks, 1 day along with this particular pregnancy.
After I finished up at Blake’s school I picked up Alexandria and feeling like our girl time was limited asked her what she wanted to do for lunch. She immediately chose 54th St. because they have the best mac n cheese, according to her distinguising tastes (I’m pretty sure it’s just like any other box mac n cheese). We enjoyed a nice lunch, just the two of us and then ran a couple of quick errands.
When we got home, I assessed the to-do list and started checking things off. I noticed that my Easter decorations were all up, so I quickly got all of those down and put the red, white and blue things up. I knew that if baby was coming, this would be a job that never got done.
Around 3 I noticed that my contractions seemed to be a bit more regular but again, dismissed the possibility of having the baby on that day. I did call Mom to give her the heads up that she might want to let her daycare moms to get a back-up plans for their kids for the following day….just in case.
Around 3:30 I called Matt and told him the same thing that I’d told Mom pretty much. Just giving him a little heads up.
At this point I thought I should probably at least start keeping track of contractions so I downloaded a contraction app on my iPhone (they really do have an app for everything) and started keeping track of my contractions. At 4 Alexandria and I walked up to the bus stop and got Blake off the bus.
We went inside, got snacks, and I finished up the laundry, vacuumed the living room floor and cleaned the kitchen because I was starting to feel like the baby probably was coming soon. Matt called to tell me he was on his way home and asked if I thought we’d need to go to the hospital soon or if we could wait until after Blake’s first tee ball practiced, scheduled for 6 that night. I told him I felt fine still so he could probably plan on practice…it seems funny now! He apparently didn’t trust my good judgement so he ran home and took the tee ball equipment to one of the other dads.
Around 5:30 my dad got here to take the kids to their house for the night. He asked if I thought I could wait another six hours or so to have the baby, hitting April 11, their anniversary date and Bruce’s birthday. I thought I could probably do that since we hadn’t even left for the hospital yet.
At this point my contractions were getting strong enough that I couldn’t just keep working through them. I had stop and bend over when one came, but I still wasn’t in pain necessarily, just uncomfortable.
Just before we left the house for the hospital Alexandria asked, “What if you have a puppy?” I explained to her that that would be very disappointing for me since I don’t even really like dogs.
We left for the hospital at about 5:45. I texted Jackie telling her that we were heading to the hospital and that I was kind of paranoid that it was going to be a false alarm. My water had broken with the other two, a sure sign that it was time.
Shortly after we left for the hospital, Matt cracked open a bag of beef jerky, one of the smells that I find most repulsive. It’s funny now….then, not so much. On the way to the hospital we reviewed our top five boy names multiple times, and Matt wasn’t getting on board with any of them.
Thanks to Matt’s shortcut on a 100 year old brick road through Alton we made it to the hospital in record time, arriving around 6:15. We went in the ER entrance, answered all of the obligatory registration questions and were on our way up to Labor and Delivery.
At about 6:30 I get into my room and joke with the nurses that I am afraid this is going to be a false alarm since my water hasn’t broken yet. I go into the bathroom to give them a urine sample and as I get off the toilet, my water breaks. I pull the call cord and assure the nurse that we are NOT having a false alarm after all and tell her that I feel like it’s time to have the baby. She rattles off a whole list of things we need to do first (get blood taken, hook up the IV, hook me up to the monitors, answer a whole slew of other questions, etc.) and all I can think is, “That is soooooooooo not gonna happen before this baby gets here.”). She checks me and then realizes that the baby is coming NOW. As soon as she checks me, she says, “Ok, the baby is right there. I’m gonna go get some people to help out.”
And then my hospital room becomes a hot spot of activity with nurses bringing in equipment, calling the doctor, moving the bed up and getting ready to greet our baby. Finally someone realized that Matt’s not in the room yet, so they go and get him out of the waiting room. I think he was surprised to see that much activity in the room when he get in there. Matt quickly redeemed himself from the beef jerky episode in the car by fetching me some ice chips. I was *really* thirsty, so I was jamming those ice chips into my mouth by the handful while the nurses got the room ready.
I was pretty much ready to push from the moment I came out of the bathroom, but since we didn’t have the room ready or a doctor there to catch the baby I had been doing the pant breathing during contractions so baby wouldn’t come crashing into the world just yet. At one point one of the nurses said, “Can we get Dr. Talsky to dress a little faster?” Amen to that! I was ready to have this baby.
At some point during all of this Matt tells me that he now likes one of my top five boy names but doesn’t indicate which one. Don’t worry, in about three minutes we will know which one. Once the doctor is fully dressed we wait for a contraction and with one push for his head and one for his shoulders, our little Colton David was born at 7:06. That escalated quickly.