Ethan's Birth Story Part 1

Ethan's entrance into the world was about as long as his pregnancy, so I'm going to break it off in a few posts to keep your eyes from bleeding.  *Warning...I'm writing this is for my own personal memories, so it may be a bit graphic in some parts.*

Saturday evening I began to feel some cramping, which I brushed off completely due to the minor cramping I had been having for a few weeks with no progress.  It intensified slightly throughout the night, just enough to wake me from sleeping a few times.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling completely unrested, and made my way to the bathroom.  As soon as I finished, I noticed blood on the toilet paper.  It wasn't just typical, minor spotting.  It was blood, and quite a bit of it.  I wiped again, and there was even more blood.  I began to feel extremely scared.  I wasn't cramping, and due to my lack of progress I thought there was no way it could be my mucous plug or bloody show.  So I called out to Jason, told him what happened and asked him to bring me my phone.  I called my Mom, and she told me that she didn't feel that was normal due to lacking other labor signs.  We decided quickly to head to Labor and Delivery to make sure that everything was ok.  I certainly did not feel like I was in labor, but I was hoping to find some signs that Ethan may be arriving on his own after all.

We arrived to Labor and Delivery around 8:30, and were immediately hooked up to monitors.  Ethan's heart rate was fabulous, and I was only having minor contractions that I could not feel at all.  They did a cervical exam, told me that I was still completely closed, but beginning to thin out.  The nurses chalked up the bleeding to an incredibly vascular cervix that was sensitive to any types of change.  They told me not to worry unless it increased.

After talking with the on call doctor, we were released to go home intending to follow through on the plan of the scheduled induction on Tuesday.  I was disappointed that my cervix had not made much change at all, and decided to use the day to make peace with the induction.

We came home, and I began cramping within an hour.  More blood.  It wasn't any more than before, so I ignored it.  Jason and I took a nap, and finally woke up around 2 and decided to head out to eat.  My cramps were becoming more timeable, so we decided to start timing them for "fun."

We ate, and talked about how this would be our last meal out without sweet Ethan in the world.  We headed home to take it easy for the remainder of the evening.  Jason and I love playing games, so we curled up on the couch, turned on the television and played Yahtzee for a couple of hours.  By this point, it was nearing 6 pm, and my "cramps" were officially 10 minutes apart.  By 8:30, we decided that these cramps were actually contractions (I know, I was in total denial, and fearful of being sent home from the hospital twice in one day) and still 10 minutes apart.  So we took a walk.  We walked around our neighborhood for a good hour, and I could feel my contractions getting much closer together, though they weren't lasting as long as they had been.

We decided that a warm bath would either stop things or let us know that I was definitely in labor.  I must say, I wish our area had somewhere that offered water births.  No wonder women choose to birth in the water.  It is so comforting, and takes so much stress off your body.  At this point, my contractions were varying from 3 minutes apart to 6 minutes apart.  I decided to text my parents and sister.  It was nearly 11 pm, and I told them that we would likely be heading to the hospital within an hour if my contractions kept the same pattern for a little longer.

Jason and I got out of the tub, got dressed and began to prepare to leave.  We had talked about taking these moments at home to be precious moments of quiet, as our last time of a family of 2.  So right before we left the house, Jason turned on some music and said that we needed to dance once more in the dark, quiet of our house.  We cried together, knowing that this was the last time it would ever be just the two of us.  It was the sweetest and most precious moment that Jason and I have shared in our marriage.

We loaded Fenway up in the car to drop him off at my parents house.  It was time to become a family of three.