I began having contractions at 4am the morning of the 21st. Although June 21 was my due date I put little faith in that actually being THE day. In fact, we had prepared ourselves to go several days, perhaps weeks past the DD. And, being the master "google-er" that I am, I knew that only 3% of first-born babies are born on their due date. So I was pretty certain it was false alarm and went back to sleep.
Arthur and I slept in and enjoyed a lazy Saturday morning. And surprisingly my contractions continued. We downloaded a contraction timer app but they were so frequent it was kind of a pain (literally) to time each one. Finally, Arthur decided that once I started having contractions that I couldn't talk through that it would be time! Every time a contraction would start he would ask me a question..."is this one stronger?", "did you start the timer?", "does this one hurt more?", etc...annoying but sweet :)
Around noon we crawled back into bed to relax and started an episode of OITNB. 10 minutes into the episode I started to realize these contractions were NOT a false alarm. I could no longer focus on the show and was having to breathe through each one. And I definitely couldn't talk though them!
Because I'm not fond of hospitals, even great ones like the one in Stavanger, we had decided ahead of time to labor at home as long as possible. I knew that many women rush to the hospital only to find out they aren't yet in active labor and have to do the "walk of shame" out of the hospital. I did NOT want that to be us!
By the way, for those who don't know...we both have brothers that were born in the car on the way to the hospital! It gave us a little more urgency to make sure we hit the sweet spot when it came to getting to the hospital at just the right time...not too early or too late.
Finally around 2:30pm I begged Arthur to call the hospital. They said it sounded like I was in or close to active labor and that if we come in around 4pm they would have a room available with a birthing tub (where I originally wanted to give birth.) Arthur began frantically running around the house filling up the hospital bag while I laid in bed dealing with monster contractions every 3-5 minutes! He would come in everytime I yelled that another one was starting and put pressure on my back and let me squeeze the crud out of his hands. Great guy that one!
When we finally left the house, my contractions were so strong and close together I could hardly walk. It's only a five minute drive from our house to the hospital but of course we took the wrong exit...Arthur knew where he was going but nothing like your pregnant wife yelling at you to "EXIT HERE NOW!" to make you question your judgement. We still made it in record time! I had found that if I was up and walking my contractions were so strong that I was afraid my legs would crumble beneath me...so I had to be wheeled into the hospital and up to the Fødeloft on the 7th floor in a wheelchair...ugh! Even in labor I wasn't happy about that.
We finally arrived on the birth floor and went into a room with a midwife. She checked me and said what I had hoped to hear...Yes, I was in active labor and yes I was ready to be admitted into the hospital. Once we got into our room the party really got started!
(to be continued...)
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