Once Upon a Time....The Birth Story of Smith Errington Pitzer Part 2

That evening I had plans with my friend Kelly to watch What to Expect When You're Expecting. Kelly recently had a baby in May, so babies and pregnancy were fresh on both our minds. I began to notice some discomfort in my lower back while watching the movie. I was a little nervous because of the stories other women had told me about going into labor after visiting the doctor, but it sure didn't feel like labor.
Plus, I was absolutely determined to go to work the next day. My substitute was going to shadow me and I would feel so much more comfortable knowing I had showed her the ropes of the classroom and introduced her to the students. And yet another reason I was determined to make it through the week was the knowledge that I had to travel to Illinois for wedding in January. It would be so much easier if I could include that time in my maternity leave rather than have to take off more time from work. I know, I know, I am really picky aren't I? The last post I rambled on and on about wanting you to come naturally before I had to be induced and now I am telling you that I really wanted you to wait a few more days so my plans could work out nicely. That left a 2 day window of Oct. 16-17. (I won't even get into how I was hoping you would avoid dates that were prime numbers. I am so crazy.)

All that said, I watched the movie and headed to bed that evening in complete denial, hoping I would feel back to normal after a night of sleep.

I attempted to sleep that night. I was really tired because I had been up until midnight the night before because our friends Bert and Rachel stayed the night with us before their flight on Thursday. I kind of slept. I just remember I kept getting out of bed with the crampy feeling in my lower back and sitting on the toilet for a couple minutes. I don't even know if I went to the bathroom. I was half asleep so it wasn't really registering to me what was going on. Eventually, around 2 a.m. I woke up enough to decide that yes, I was indeed in labor. Rather than be excited, I was a tad disappointed because I knew I would not be going to work that day. I was also surprised that the onset of my labor was not obvious to me-I basically had been in the early stages for 7 or 8 hours without really knowing it. (My denial might have played a large part in that.)

I started timing my contractions shortly thereafter and they were around 5 minutes apart. Wow..this was really it!! I decided to wake up John around 3 a.m. to tell him the big news. He wasn't too surprise. He said that when we were leaving the midwife's office he thought he heard God say, "Tonight's the night." Well, he was right! John then told me he had difficulty going to sleep the night before- so he reviewed the things we had learned and went over the birth plan a couple of times. How cute!
Next, we opened up our Google doc packing list and proceded to finish packing. (Most of our stuff had been packed for a couple of weeks. We, of course, had a color coding system to tell which items still needed to be packed). In the meantime, John left messages alerting our parents and I called the midwife and she suggested eating breakfast and taking a shower, so I did just that. I took a long, hot, relaxing shower. It was just what I needed. Meanwhile, John fixed me an amazing breakfast consisting of an eggs, an English muffin, a chicken breast, and probably a few other things. I remember thinking how sweet it was that he not only made me breakfast, but was thoughtful enough to include a great deal of protein. Good thinkin! Unfortunately, the last thing I felt like doing was eating. I attempted a bite of the English muffin, and it didn't settle well. The next thing I knew I was throwing up my dinner from the night before. Lovely. I don't feel nauseous or puke throughout my entire pregnancy until now???

By around 6:15 we were off to the hospital.....11 hours of labor down, how many more to go???