I’m a New Mommy!

My Labor Story

It feels good to sit down and begin a new blog post, something that I haven’t done in quite a while. A lot has happened since my last post. One major, wonderful, adorable change is that – you guessed it from the title – I’m a new mommy!

On October 24, we welcomed our sweet boy into the world. This was a little bit of a surprise, since he was only 37 weeks, but it was a very welcomed surprise.

My husband and I had been preparing for our little one’s arrival from the day that we found out about him. I admit, we must have watched every YouTube video ever published on basically every topic about pregnancy, newborns and labor that you could think of. Every labor video said basically the same thing – a first time mom’s labor is long, and that you will have a lot of time before active labor begins. All of the women in these videos had the same experience. They labored at home for hours during early labor, and then much, much later they went to the hospital. So naturally, this is what I expected to happen.

My experience was much different.

We had gone to visit my parents that afternoon. I was feeling uncomfortable, but nothing that I thought too much of. I had been battling sciatica during pregnancy, so I just thought that the mild pain and discomfort that I was feeling was due to that. After the visit we went home and the day went as usual. That evening we cooked dinner together – pad thai. We hadn’t made a dinner from scratch in a while, so we were excited to try our hand at this that night. We sat down to eat and watch Netflix.

After a bit I was feeling that same discomfort again. My husband went to get the exercise ball for me to sit on. After all, we had seen many videos where women began their early labor by sitting on an exercise ball. So he brought the ball in and helped me stand up. That’s when we noticed that my pants were wet. Had my water actually broken or had I just wet my pants? The baby had been sitting on my bladder, and I had been needing to pee a lot the past day or two. So I went to the bathroom, and then came back to sit on the exercise ball while we began watching labor videos and reading everything we could.

The pains began increasing, and becoming more frequent, so we began timing them. At first they were inconsistent – 5 minutes apart, then 7, then 6 then 8. Pretty soon they started coming at regular intervals, and they were becoming more intense. We decided to get ready to go to the hospital. We had partially packed our hospital bag, but there were some last minute items that we needed to add. So between contractions my husband continued to pack the bag, and then the car, while running back to me whenever I yelled that the contraction was starting.

Soon we were in the car and driving to the hospital. The contractions were very strong at this point, and coming every three minutes. My husband was reassuring me that everything was going to be ok. We made it to the hospital, parked and began walking to the door. More of my water was flowing out. Right as we reached the entrance I had another contraction, which made me double over and scream out. The attendant at the door got me a wheelchair, and we made it to the check in. Since it was the age of COVID, we had to be screened and answer questions before entering the hospital. I was definitely in active labor, having more contractions, and not able to really answer anything. We were allowed through the front doors and into the hospital where we had to stop at yet another check in. my husband was trying to square everything away as I sat in the wheel chair having – you guessed it – more contractions. Finally we were able to head to the elevator and up to labor and delivery.

We made it into the delivery room and I stood up from the wheel chair to change into a hospital gown. More contractions hit, and more water ran. The nurse told me to get on the bed. I said I couldn’t, because the contraction was so strong. She told me that if I didn’t get on the bed, then I would be having my baby on the floor. Needless to say, I made my way to the bed.

It was only 10 minutes from the time that I got on the bed, to the time that we welcomed our sweet little boy, Aidan, into the world.