Papillon's Birth Story: Part 2: The Drive

Continued from Part 1.

I insisted on walking around the block before we left, even though it was raining. Walking made them consistently 2 minutes apart, still 45 seconds long. So we got in the car.

Getting in the car for some reason slowed things down a bit. I went 6 minutes without a contraction which in my mind (still in denial) meant things were slowing to a stop; so I made Mon Amour pull over into a shopping center so we could walk some more and see if this was really happening. We walked around the dollar store, and then around the whole shopping center, and we were back to just 2-3 minute breaks. I was supposed to be using the words "on" and "off" to indicate to Mon Amour when to time the contractions, and somewhere in the middle of the dollar store, I think I started using "on" as a swear word, repeating it viciously through the peak of the contraction. So Mon Amour told me there would be no more stopping, we were going to the hospital.

The ride was painful, but I still had breaks in between so I thought I was doing pretty well and we talked about whether Papillon would arrive on the 10th or 11th, and whether or not she would have hair, and that kind of thing. I, being in denial, also talked about where we should go out to dinner after we got turned away from the hospital (still not believing that this was the real thing or that I was actually making any progress).

Then, about 10 minutes from the hospital, a contraction hit, and my water broke. Like yikes. Despite all of our careful preparation, we didn't think to bring anything for this kind of situation. When my water broke, my denial of the whole situation officially and abruptly ended. It hit me like a ton of bricks that it was really happening, and I started sobbing. I apologized for ruining the car, and then just cried some more. Mon Amour was a great coach at this point, and eventually I regained most of my composure.

We arrived at the hospital and made it to the registration desk. That's when things really started picking up for me, and everyone else seemed to start moving really slowly. The registration girl was nice, and obviously was trying her best to rush me through. She offered me a seat, but I told her my water had broken and she probably didn't want me to sit on anything at this moment. She agreed. Then another contraction hit and I leaned on the desk and closed my eyes. Just as I did, she handed me some papers to sign but then saw that I would not be signing anything at that moment and promptly handed them to Mon Amour and said it was ok for him to sign them.

The nurse who was going to take us to a labor and delivery room was nice, but moved super slowly (in my opinion). She made us stand by her desk while she "finished up just one thing" on her computer. That took a good 3 contractions.

By about 6:30pm we were in a room.

The nurse felt my stomach and concluded that this would be a small baby - 7 lbs maybe. "Unless she is hiding it" the nurse said. The nurse than proceeded to ask a long string of ridiculous questions and started punching answers into her computer. I tried to answer politely. The most memorable question was when she asked me about my allergy - sulfa drugs.
"What happens when you have sulfa drugs?"
"I don't know"
"You don't know"
"No, I haven't had them since i was probably 2"
"So you don't know what happens. Rash? Vomitting? Anything?"
"No clue"

We kept going back and forth like that for a while, until finally she concluded "Well, I guess we will just play it safe and not give you any sulfa drugs". So....if my allergic reaction had been something like "just a rash", would they have given me that drug anyway? Note to self -in the future, just tell them that sulfa drugs send me in cardiac arrest or something. That should simplify things.

Soon the doctor came in to check my progress. He was a very nice doctor; I didn't notice at the time, but Mon Amour informed me later that the doctor called me "ma'am" the whole time. He seemed to take a long time checking to see how dilated I was. I tried to be patient, assuming it was the pain making things seem so slow. But no, after a little while the nurse piped up and said "The suspense is killing us all!" And finally the doctor informed us that I was 5cms.

5 was good, but in my mind (as well as the nurses, I think) 5 still meant that there was a long ways to go. Time to fill up that tub and settle in. Mon Amour went to get our things from the car (exercise ball, etc etc).

Little Papillon Rouge, however, had other plans.

To Be Continued.