It started at midnight on the 12th of March. I remember suddenly waking up feeling a tight knot in my stomach. I thought perhaps I just needed to pee (again). So I heaved myself out of bed, carefully stepping over Milo to get to the toilet. My dog had at this point stationed himself as close to me as possible, refusing to sleep in his kennel, which I thought was quite sweet. I wasn’t sure if dogs really knew what goes on during pregnancy but Milo had turned into my secondary shadow, constantly following me around and always snuggling up right next to me on the couch.
Anyway, I didn’t think much of the discomfort, at this stage of my pregnancy (39 weeks), night time visits to the toilet were customary. I laid back down, tried to get into a comfortable position and began the slow process of lulling myself back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up abruptly again, to the same uncomfortable knot in my stomach. This time I thought… this was probably the Branxton Hicks contractions my Ob-Gyn was talking about. I was excited since that meant my body was practising for the real thing and I had never felt it before. I laid back down contemplating the next chapter of our lives with our baby boy and slowly fell back asleep again. This pattern repeated itself until 6am, when my husband woke up. I looked at him and said… it’s regular, maybe this is it? I still felt fine and the cramps were so far apart that we just decided to continue on with our day per normal until the symptoms changed.
By 9am, the contractions were arriving every half an hour or so. They were slightly uncomfortable but I was still able to walk around. I called up the Vet to see if there were any appointments left for the kennel cough vaccination. Milo needed to be up to date with his vaccinations so that he could be dropped off at the pet centre nearby during my stay at the hospital during / post giving birth. I thought I’d try to get it done now in case bub decided to come a bit early! Thankfully someone had cancelled and there was an opening at 10.30am…
An hour later, I walked out of the clinic after pinning down Milo for his shot. I could feel another contraction coming on, it was starting to feel a little more uncomfortable than earlier on in the day. Milo, unaware, pulled tightly at his leash to go lie on some grass nearby, spilling some of the treats I had in my hand in the process. I sighed and thought, good idea Milo and sat down next to him, slowly returning the fallen treats back into the pouch, waiting for the contraction to pass. On the drive back home, I was seriously craving butter chicken and garlic naan, my go to comfort food when in the mood for Indian food. My husband decided he would come home early and grabbed it for me on the way. He inquired how I was feeling, to which I said… I think he might be on the way soon…
By 6pm the contractions were around 15mins apart and were veering toward being more painful than uncomfortable. I asked Vishal if we should call the hospital to ask whether or not to come in yet. We were told to try to stay at home unless the waters broke, or the contractions were 5mins apart. We were comfortable taking it as close to the deadline as possible considering the hospital was only 10mins away from home. My friend rang shortly after to see if she could drop by around 7.30pm. By now, I was wearing the TENS machine I had borrowed from another friend of mine and was quietly playing with Milo on the floor in the apartment. It was nice to see her and chit chat about random things to distract me from my contractions. She even took some photos of Milo and I which were great full-term pregnancy photos.
At 8.30pm we decided to drive down to the hospital just to verify the progress. Arriving at the hospital, we waited in anticipation in our gigantic birthing suite. The oncall Ob-Gyn asked me to lie down on the bed for a ‘quick look’. It was the most uncomfortable look I have ever had. She smiled and said that it was definitely happening and that I was 100% effaced, 3cm dilated with my waters still intact. I was sort of disappointed, I think I had hyped up my excitement hoping baby was arriving very soon. She advised that we could go back home if it was more comfortable and come back when the contractions were closer together. I preferred that option, I never really liked hospitals…
We both came home. I was feeling a bit queasy and threw up some of my dinner before settling down on the couch which was now more comfortable than our bed. I lied down with the TV on and Milo cuddling my head until just after midnight. Now the contractions were 5mins apart and rather jarring, so we made the executive decision to go back to the hospital. The car ride there could not have been fast enough as I found sitting down extremely awkward by this point. I took deep breaths and walked into the birthing suite again. The nurse asked me to lie down so she could put the heart rate monitor for the baby and a device that can check how far apart the contractions were occurring. They were still 5-6 minutes apart. No position was comfortable other than holding on to the bed and kneeling down on the floor. But the nurse kept telling me off for that because the heartbeat monitor wasn’t quite long enough to stay on my stomach at that angle. I was too focussed on giving birth to care.
Around 2.30am, the need to push became stronger. Everytime the contractions occurred, my body seized up to push down and it actually helped with controlling the pain. The nurse said I had better lie down, the baby was coming even though my contractions were relatively further apart than the usual. I started pushing at 3am. We were lucky to have squeezed in some antibiotics. There was no time for any medication, no gas, no epidural… before I knew it, I was on the bed and pushing. I remember concentrating on the doctor’s voice and pushing whenever I was told and… within a couple of hours, I was holding my baby in my arms. He was beautiful, he was healthy and that’s all that mattered. It was only days afterward, when I looked at my report from the hospital that I realised that I had gotten a a sizeable episioptomy and 5 stitches as well. No wonder I was so sore!
I went into childbirth with so many scary stories… but my birth story was rather uneventful comparatively and I was glad! Perhaps I was just lucky with my birth this time, but any pain I felt melted away the instant I looked down at my boy’s face ❤
What was your birth story like? Let me know!
movingforwardpriya 
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