Sunday, March 26, 2017

That One Time We Tried to Celebrate Valentine's Day...[Birth Story Part 1]

As you may or may not recall, after much deliberation, we made the decision to schedule a cesarean delivery for Tuesday, Feburary 16, 2016.  Most planned deliveries (induced or otherwise) are scheduled for Mondays; not that it's important at all, but I didn't want Bennett to have a February 15th birthday because the kid would have no shot at feeling special with a birthday so close to Valentine's Day (especially if he were to ever be in a serious relationship).

February 16th sounded like a pretty good date...no odd numbers (I'm weird about that), and it kind of had a ring to it.  2.16.16.  Yep, it flowed pretty well, or so I thought.  Apparently God and babies are pretty similar when it comes to telling them your plans...

Fast forward to Sunday, February 14, 2016.  Alex and I decided to take advantage of one of our last evenings pre-baby by going out to dinner at Logan's Roadhouse.  While we were pleasantly surprised there was no wait on this holiday of sorts, the restaurant seemed to be out of everything.  It was like they hadn't anticipated an influx of customers for the weekend and everything was used up prior to Sunday.  We made the best of it and chatted about what the coming days were sure to bring.

Nothing out of the ordinary, we went home after dinner, relaxed, and turned in for the night.  Sometime around 11 p.m., my stomach started hurting.  I ignored it for a while, fell back asleep, and then woke up every hour for the next few hours feeling the aches.  At some point, my bladder told me I needed to get up, and I thought maybe I'd find relief by using the bathroom.  Not so.  I returned to bed, curled on my side and tried to fall back asleep.

Not long after returning to bed, Alex got up to use the bathroom.  When he returned, I decided to tell him that I didn't feel well and my stomach was hurting.  (This was around 1:15-1:30 a.m.)  It really hadn't occurred to me at all before, but Alex asked if he should try to time what must be contractions.  Since I wouldn't have even told him about the aches if he hadn't gotten up to pee, I was kind of surprised by his question, but agreed to try to time them.  At this point, we realized the contractions were __________ apart, not close together or super regular, but we kept timing.

As pregnant women do, I went to the bathroom again and realized something was different.  I hadn't experienced a "gush," but I thought perhaps I was "leaking" amniotic fluid...hmm.  We had been told previously to come in using the 511 rule (contractions every 5 minutes, lasting 1 minute, for 1 hour) or if my water were to break.  Since we weren't sure on the last part, we decided to call the on-call doctor.  When we mentioned the scheduled cesarean, we were told to go in, just in case.

And yep, I'm going to leave you hanging right there...mostly because things get foggy from here on and Alex isn't home to consult for assistance with the details...lol.  BUT, how about one more photo of us before we lost our innocence and became real, live, can't-run-away-and-hide, PARENTS!  Muhahahahahahahah.....