As promised, all the ooey gooey details. The squeamish and faint of heart should just know that Amelia Rose Dilts was born on 8/20/12 at 6:11 pm PST in Springfield, OR. She weighed 7 pounds even and was exactly 20 inches long. Those of you eager for the rest of the story may continue reading.
My Bag of Waters Breaks... Dun Dun DUN!
Maybe I'm psychic. While eating my midnight snack on Saturday night (apple fritters are nom) I bounced around on a yoga ball. (They told me to lean forward whenever I could because that might help Pterodactyl get out of occiput posterior and into the perfect position.) As I bounced, I thought, Huh. I think it'll start soon. I am not sure why exactly I thought this. I went to bed.
A few hours later at 3:30 am, I woke up to a little gush. I first thought, "Aw dang, did I seriously just pee the bed?" but then I reconsidered. No, that didn't feel like it came from the urethra. That felt more like a period gush, only more liquidy. I stuffed tissues under myself and, after smelling the small puddle now present in the bed, ambled over to the toilet wondering what amniotic fluid was supposed to smell like. Once on the toilet, I realized I was still trickling (not gushing though) clear fluid.
I looked up at the bathroom clock and realized it had only been fifteen minutes since my last toilet visit. ... Well, that's more evidence that this wasn't pee. My next thoughts: Huh. I think my water broke. I knew we should have put the waterproof mattress pad on the bed today. (I had seriously considered making James do it before he fell asleep.) And I was dripping still. Drip, drip. Nothing. Drip, drip. Tiny gush when baby moved. Nothing.
I sat on the toilet for half an hour, leaking gently but continuously. And I was starving. And my pubic bone hurt. I debated calling the midwife-on-call, but I decided not to, because it was 3:30am and I wasn't super concerned. Given what I'd already been told during my prenatal appointments, they'd likely tell me to go back to sleep, maybe come in later that day, and consider that I may need to be induced if I don't go into labor soon (within the next day or two). Plus, I was GBS negative, so I didn't even need IV antibiotics. Might as well stuff my face then go back to bed instead.
While falling back asleep, I mourned that I hadn't really nested at all. Maybe I should at least do the dishes when I wake up again. ... Naw. In any case, that mattress pad is going on the bed as soon as James wakes up. And James is going to do that.
When James woke up in the morning to get ready for church, I told him what had happened. ... ... He was really excited. He bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced, because now that it was pretty much guaranteed that we'd have a baby in the next day or two, it was okay to be super excited, right? Since I hadn't even remotely started labor yet, I figured I may as well go to church with plenty of padding. I went to church, and continued to not go into labor, and leaked completely through my pads as I walked out the door to go home. Gross. (I've decided having a broken bag of waters is way more annoying than being on a heavy period. Amniotic fluid is much harder to contain between your legs than heavy blood is.)
When we got home, we followed the midwife's recommendation to encourage labor to start: nipple stimulation. Ugh. I disliked this. Intensely. It involved rubbing both nipples for 15 minutes straight, then taking a 15-minute break, then rub for another 15 minutes, etc. How uncomfortable. This did give me three weak contractions during the nipple rub, but as soon as I stopped, so did the contractions. This was frustrating. James was annoying in his cheery contraction-centric comments and questions. Shut up, James. He was good and shut up.
We went to the birth center for fetal monitoring that night. Amelia was doing very well. The midwife confirmed that it was indeed amniotic fluid I'd been gushing all day. We decided to wait through the night to see if labor started on its own. If it didn't, we'd go to the hospital to be induced.
I slept fairly well through the night. I did notice that the weak contractions I'd been having got a little more intense, but they were not at all close to starting active labor. Because it had been so long since the bag of waters had broken, the midwife thought it was a good idea to induce as the risk of infection was now increasing to be less and less negligible. It had also been long enough that I should give birth in the hospital instead of the birth center anyway.
So. We went to the hospital and got there at 9:30 am on Monday morning. My sister came with us. We got to sit in a room for a while to wait the nurses to check me in. Eventually somebody got an IV in my arm and they got the Pitocin going.
Stay tuned for part two! :)
Jenna and Amelia
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