Labor

No surprise that I haven't found a lot of time to come back to the blog, but in the midst of my sleep deprivation, I wanted to get down the story of Ava's birth.

It can be broken into three parts -- labor, delivery, postpartum.

Labor

At 4am on Tuesday, the 20th, I woke up with contractions. They weren't bad and they weren't like anything I'd ever felt before. (Each one starts mildly, then ramps up, then fades -- lasts about 45 sec. to a min.) They were coming about every 10 minutes, so I woke Dave up and let him know that we'd be heading to the hospital at some point that day.

We paged the on-call doc, who told us to sit tight until the contractions were closer to 5 minutes apart. So, we waited. I walked around the apartment. Occasionally with my computer.

Soon, the contractions were closer. (Yes, there's an app for that.)

And more painful.

So, after speaking with my doctor's nurse, we left for the hospital around 9:30am.

We arrived in triage where the big question was, "Do you feel like you need pain medication yet?" I thought about it and decided I could tough it out for a bit more. DO NOT DO THIS. GET THE PAIN MEDICATION AS SOON AS THEY OFFER IT.

As I waited in triage, the contractions quickly became insufferable. Even harder to tolerate than the green hospital gown.

After working through them for what felt like forever, I was finally transferred to the delivery room. It was 1pm. I was anxious, terrified and desperate to get things going, all at once.

Next up: Epidural magic/mishap, baby's debut