Contractions Begin

Continuing...

On Sunday, the 17th, Nick was spending the weekend with us and I had made plans to take him to Target by our house to by his dad a Xmas present. After I got off the phone with Evie, I decided to take a L-O-N-G shower. I basically prepared myself for having my goods being viewed by several strangers and family members. Had to make it look pretty down there. Shaved my legs too, because I didn't want to be prickly for those that would need to hold onto my legs. Mind you, at this time I wasn't in labor. I simply had a "feeling".

Nick and I went to Target. While there, I knew I was picking up frames for Mike's body building photos from the boys, but I seemed to leave with much more than that. I had picked up more newborn diapers (because I had been stressed that I didn't have enough), cotton balls for bath time, travel size deodorant, travel size shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, even waterproof mascara so my eyes would still look bright and lively even after pushing a bowling ball out of my vagina. See, I just had a hunch. This whole time, Nick and I had been walking and walking around the store. We finally left and once I got to the parking lot, what had been Braxton Hicks all day had suddenly shifted. I had to stop for a second and take a deep breath. Whoa, that wasn't Braxton Hicks. That felt like...MENSTRUAL CRAMPS!!! Menstrual cramps = labor! That was 4:00 pm. I was a little excited, needless to say. It was time for me to take Nick home and by the time we reached his community, it had been 10 minutes and I started having another cramp. I went over a large bump in the road and it hurt. I walked Nick into his house and gently told him, "I want you to tell your mom that I might be in labor right now. I don't know for sure, but just in case, I want her to have a heads up so she's prepared to bring you to the hospital. So, I might see you again tonight or tomorrow." Nick had a huge grin on his face and his eyes were beaming. It was awesome. I was a little nervous for saying it outloud because I was new to all of this and I wasn't 100% positive.

When I got home, Mike was watching TV or he was on the phone. I honestly can't remember which. I do know that I interrupted what he was doing by saying, "I think we might be going to the hospital sometime tonight." Really? I explained what was going on and what the whole day consisted of. Mike played it down a bit because he didn't want to get all excited and ultimately get disappointed. After a little bit, the contractions started coming every five minutes. Each time, Mike would make me laugh which made the discomfort even worse because I was laughing through them instead of breathing through them. Our friend Gavin wanted to swing by so we had him pick us up dinner. "Dinner" consisted of a cheese burger for me and two tacos for Mike. I suppose we should've titled it "snack" instead. He hung out for a while and Mike shared with him that Kathy thinks she might be in labor. I finally asked him why he was so mean. Mike said he just didn't believe me, which, again made me laugh so hard that the contraction made me laugh silently because that's all I could get out. I snuck away upstairs and called Triage at the hospital. I explained what was going on, how far along I was, and my concerns of heading that way and being told it's false labor. She told me to come in anyway to get checked because the worse thing that could happen is simply being sent back home. No big deal. This was about 8 pm. After talking with Mike, he said let's go at 10:00 pm if it doesn't seem to be changing.

Something changed. By that, I mean more intense and more often. At 9:30 I began checking everything I had in my bag and told Mike that we needed a bigger suitcase in order to pack both our things. The box for the Cord Blood Banking took up half the suitcase I was already using and I hadn't even packed Mike's and my blankets, yet. We grabbed the larger suitcase and finished packing everything. Mike suddenly said, "I don't know if I'm ready for this. I didn't go to Lowes and the closet isn't done yet." I thought this was very cute. 10:00 was creeping around and we had what we needed down stairs. Suddenly, Mike had a panic attack. His blood sugar dropped and he thought he was going to throw up. I almost freaked out and asked, "WHO'S GONNA DRIVE?!!" We began packing some snacks for Mike while he quickly ate two cookies and downed a glass of milk. Not until we got to the hospital did we notice that everything we packed was Reese's peanut butter cups, M&Ms, cookies, fudge, caramel pop corn, pop tarts, and a bag of Doritos. Oops. When what you crave is sugar at the time, probably not a good time to pack food.

The contractions started coming on faster and stronger. As we were walking towards the car, I had to stop walking and breathe. Once I got to the car and started putting things in, I had to stop again. During all of this, Mike was taking pictures of me having my contractions. I took a picture of him getting the car seat all set up. We wanted to document everything. The garage door went down, we backed the car up, and we were on our way...