Wilson's Birth Story, part 1

I want to remember every little detail of how labor began up until Wilson's debut.  It was the most exciting, difficult, rewarding, amazing, 25 hours of my life.  When I sit back and think about it now just a few days later, I can only thank God for his supervision over it all.  He had His hands all around us, and we are incredibly blessed.  We cannot thank Him enough!

So here's how it started...

(And beware, there may be details you don't want to know about...Proceed with caution.)

Last Saturday, Caleb's parents had come up for a visit.  Caleb and his dad went to a movie during the afternoon, and his mom took me to get a pedicure.  I joked with the lady doing my pedicure that I wanted her to make me go into labor that night.  We had Papa John's (our fave) for dinner Saturday night, and I went to bed around 9 pm.  When I went to the bathroom, I noticed I had lost my mucus plug.  We have patients call and come in to the office where I work all the time after they lost their mucus plugs, and they think they're in labor.  I've learned that it usually just means your body is STARTING to get ready for labor.  It could still be days to weeks for the real thing.  So I didn't get too excited when it happened.  After explaining what it meant to Caleb and googling tons of other people's "mucus plug" stories, we went on to bed at 10 pm.  Within about 5 minutes of lying down, I felt a gush of fluid in my panties.  I told Caleb I thought I just tee teed on myself.  I hopped up and ran to the potty, at which time I truly did tee tee from laughing so much.

I called Dr. Fowler (who happened to be on call, and she was the doctor who I wanted to do the delivery) and told her what I thought had happened.  Being a PA in ObGyn, I did NOT want to be THAT girl who comes to L&D for "ruptured membranes" when it was truly just peeing on myself.  Dr. Fowler convinced me to come on in to be checked, and it's a good thing I did.

Here I am before leaving the house Saturday night.

We drove to the hospital, and I got checked in L&D.  They confirmed that my water had broken, and I was not gonna be leaving until we have this baby boy!!!  I was having some contractions, but I was only one centimeter dilated at the time.  

They got me set up in a room, hooked up to the monitor, IV started, and we began Pitocin to make the contractions stronger.  I was feeling great at this point and just very excited.

We were anxiously awaiting what will happen over the next several hours...