Dakota’s story begins on the very early morning of July 2nd, 2012 when I woke up around 5am feeling slight contractions. I wasn’t able to go back to sleep because they seemed to be coming at a rather steady pace although they weren’t terribly painful. As soon as Tony’s alarm went off for work, I told him I didn’t think he should go in that morning because I wasn’t sure if I was going in to labor or not. He happily climbed back in bed and fell right back to sleep.
About an hour later he woke back up asking if my contractions were still there and when I said yes, he started to help me time them. In the very beginning they were coming regularly, about every 5 minutes or so. Then, for some reason or another, they became irregular and much more sporadic. I’d have numbers something like this: 7:17am, 7:22am, 7:25am, 7:41am and so on. Some close together and some really far apart. With my contractions being so unusual (for me, at least) I decided to go ahead and call the doctor on duty to ask what he or she thought I should do. The doctor I spoke with (I go to a practice that has many doctors and I’m not assigned a specific one) told me that should my contractions start to regulate or become more painful, I should go ahead in to the hospital, but since they seemed to be so sporadic they may just simply go away, it was just a decision I was going to have to make as the day went on.
I spent my entire morning and afternoon much like I would spend any other day, only having contractions throughout. I did laundry, cleaned up around the house, played with Harper and just went about my day as usual…until around 3pm when I told Tony that I just didn’t think I could also spend the whole night dealing with the contractions. They were still irregular at this point, but gaining some strength. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the hospital, wait an eternity to see a physician and then be told to go home because I wasn’t really in labor. I decided that we had to go though because the pain seemed more pronounced and I didn’t want to wait until the middle of the night to make my decision. We called my mother-in-law to stay with the boys while we went to the hospital and when it came to saying good bye to Zoe, Landon and Harper it was just about all I could stand. I had been worrying about saying bye to them for probably a month or so, mostly concerned with how Harper would deal with it since he and I have never been separated before. I ended up giving Zoe and Landon a quick hug and just blowing Harper a kiss before I started crying and went to wait for Tony outside. I didn’t want anyone to worry more than they already were, and a tearful mom wouldn’t help anything at that point anyways!
I think it might have been the quietest car ride ever. I was still sad about leaving the kids and trying to run through all the possibilities that could happen once we got to the hospital and I think Tony was probably thinking the same things as I was, which just left little to say. We parked the car in the garage and then made our way into the main lobby to check-in. We rode up in the elevator with one other woman, and when the doors opened she politely said I could get off first, but I couldn’t even move because of the contraction I was experiencing at that exact moment. I just shook my head no, and told her to go first and I think she then realized what was happening, so she quickly got off. I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it off the elevator before the doors shut, but ended up forcing myself to walk out instead of ride to another floor! We got our wrist bands and then headed up to the maternity ward where I felt a bit of a relief just because I figured if I felt like I needed to push all the sudden, the people would know what to do!
We were quickly checked in and taken to a room in the recovery area (they had quite an influx of patients that day and didn’t have a delivery room available) where I was asked 4 million questions, asked to leave a urine sample and then left to wait for a nurse to check if I was dilated or not. Luckily, the wait wasn’t long and when the nurse did her exam she informed me that I was dilated somewhere between a 5 and 6! I was so surprised and relieved! Surprised that the pain wasn’t much worse at that point and relieved that they weren’t going to send me home!
Not too long after that exam I was able to get into a delivery room where I would be able to labor in comfort…haha. Labor and comfort really aren’t two words that go together, but you know what I mean.
This seems like a good place to end part 1…
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