Last night we put our birth team on alert. I'd spent a couple of hours that afternoon mopping the floors, always an ominous behavior in the nine-months-pregnant. Around 8:30 p.m. my crumb-sweeping was interrupted by a truly awesome contraction, the likes of which I don't remember ever having had before. It wasn't painful exactly but WOW was it powerful, as if someone had wrapped a wide rubber belt around my waist, just above the bump, and then pulled me down by it with all their might. I had the distinct sensation of my whole body being pulled down, to the point where it actually felt as if my legs were supporting extra weight and might buckle.
It was very, very weird. I found it difficult to breathe normally. And the sensation continued for nearly ten minutes, and only released gradually, leaving me breathless and even a little bit frightened. It wasn't something I remembered happening in any of my previous labors. I was worried that it might be what precipitous labor feels like (because how the heck else does someone dilate and give birth in one or two hours?)
A couple more of those over the next hour and we called our friends and our midwives and let them know. It was nice to find out that the midwife who lives close was at home and not planning to go anywhere that evening.
We decided not to alert the kids, who'd been sent downstairs to watch a movie because we planned to finish watching a borrowed DVD that night. But we spent a couple of hours putting away the accumulated laundry, clearing off the top of the desk in the upstairs office, and clearing the bookshelf next to the bed to make room for supplies. (I was having trouble staying calm until I realized I had some preparations I could make, and once I started working, I felt instantly more centered in myself and ready to face labor.)
I kept having those powerful contractions every 20 minutes, interspersed with various other signs that indicated we'd better at least take this possibility seriously. I hovered and paced anxiously while the kids had bedtime snack and brushed their teeth, and when the boys were in bed and Mark and I lay down with MJ to put her to sleep, I fell asleep myself, and that was that.
I woke up a couple of times with a strong contraction in the middle of the night, and several more times from the baby's tossing and turning inside me, but that was all. Oh, except for the really fun thing where I was going to get up and go to the bathroom, so I pushed myself up from lying on my side to sitting up, and during the few seconds of sitting while I gathered my strength to stand, something in my pelvis sheared past something else in my pelvis and clicked into place with a grinding thump that I could actually hear. Ewwwww! It makes me cringe just thinking of that sound. It will probably give me nightmares.
Around 8:15 AM Mark woke up: "No baby yet, huh?"
"Yeah. I would have let you know if the baby showed up."
"I looked over and noticed that there wasn't one here yet, so I went back to sleep."
I grumbled as I got up and found myself getting ready for the same old Saturday things, the going out to breakfast, the packing up of school planning materials to work on in the coffee shop. I would see if I could walk in to the salon and get a haircut today. Mark would take the kids to swimming lessons and then to the grocery store. All that normal stuff. And probably Monday would come same as always, and we'd start a new week. I had for a few hours begun to look forward to a suspension of normal activity, a sort of holiday or special occasion, and it had dissipated and only normal life was left.
My van wouldn't start this morning, though, so now I have something different to be annoyed about, at least for 2-3 hours while we wait for the plug-in charger to restore the battery. I hope I can at least manage to get my hair cut today, that being one of the things to check off on the "before the baby's born" list.
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