One of my favorite things about birth is the suspense of not knowing when it will start. I love the sense of anticipation in those final days. The funny thing is that all my births have started the same exact way — with my water breaking at night — but I still love not knowing how and when labor will begin.
With Diletta, we were ready. So very ready. First of all, we thought she was going to be born at 1:30pm on Thursday, March 19th in a scheduled c-section because of my placenta previa. I dreaded the thought of pulling my baby from the womb at 37 weeks, but it was unavoidable, except by a miracle. I prepared as much as I could — washing a small load of baby clothes, borrowing nursing paraphernalia from friends, and gathering all the c-section recovery tips I could from other moms.
Then God changed the plan drastically when my doctor called on the evening of March 11th (eight days before my scheduled surgery) and said the placenta had finally moved, after not budging at all for fourteen weeks of pregnancy. The miracle happened! The surgery was canceled, and then we got to really prepare for the baby’s arrival. I completed my grading for the semester. We finished our taxes. We cleaned out the garage (technically, Micah did, and I gave input on where items should go while sitting in a beach chair). We washed every car seat in the house, including two dusty infant carriers. When Micah’s sister arrived on April 1st, it was go-time. We were prepared. We had childcare. Baby could come at any time
Every day I would get fully prepared to have the baby. Schoolwork with the girls and checking work email in the morning. Shower, shave, and hair curled in the afternoon. Dinner, sleep, and… repeat.
But the baby didn’t come. We thought, maybe, the baby would arrive a day or two before the due date, as Talitha and Eisley had. But then I made it to April 7th and there was still no baby. We got a few more things done… selling items on Offer Up, renewing the car registration, ordering new checks from the bank. No baby.
The one small change this pregnancy is that I actually had a night of contractions. On Sunday night, we watched the new movie Onward with the girls. About halfway through the film, I started noticing I was having small contractions. By the end of the movie, they were happening every 3 or 4 minutes. Even though they teach you all about timing contractions and in the hospital birth class, I have never actually gone through the process. My water has broken to start labor (with no preceding contractions) every single time. As we were watching the movie, I decided to download a contraction counter on my phone. What was the rule again? Contractions for one minute, five minutes apart?
We put the girls to bed and I tried to get some sleep myself, but the contractions were too distracting. Finally, at about 2am, I got out of bed and took a book out to the reading chair in our loft. I figured I was either going into labor, so I wouldn’t be sleeping anyway, or the contractions would finally subside and the reading would help me eventually drift off to sleep. By 3am, the contractions seemed to be lessening, so I made my way off to bed. Apart from a rogue contraction here or there, nothing really happened for the next 36 hours.
But on Tuesday, I felt heavy. Like gravity was taking its toll and the baby was pushing down, down, down. Reading back on my other birth stories, it seems that’s been a sign that labor is imminent. I went to bed that night around midnight and woke up suddenly a few hours later. My water had broken. I couldn’t feel it, but I just knew it. April 8th would be this child’s birthday.
I made my way to the bathroom in the dark, hoping the clock read 4:00 or 5:00am and that I had actually slept for quite a few hours. No. It was 2:40am. I made my way to the toilet and, sure enough, found a little circle of fluid in my underwear. No gush. Just a drip.
I got changed, put on my make-up, and packed up my toiletries. My hair was already curled from the pre-labor routine from the previous afternoon. I woke Micah and told him my water was broken and we should head to the hospital soon. As usual, he murmured and went back to sleep for a few more minutes, but soon enough, he hopped up and took a quick shower and packed a bag.
While Micah was getting ready, I called the Kaiser labor and delivery line and told them we were headed in. The nurse on the phone gave me the run-down on the current COVID-19 policies. Micah would have to drop me off to go into triage alone. He should park the car and wait until I was admitted and then he would have to bring in ALL our personal belongings in one trip. Once he got screened and came inside the hospital, he could not leave again, even to go out to the parking lot.
We rapped on Kayla’s door and told her it was time. She took our “pre-hospital” picture. It’s funny that all my labors have been so similar that we are able to practice the same traditions each time.
We prayed on our way to the hospital and hoped for the best. Over the past few weeks, we had heard many strange and sad stories about women giving birth in the time of Coronavirus. Moms birthing alone without their partners, being screened for the virus before labor, giving birth in masks, dads getting kicked out of labor for coughing, moms and babies being separated after birth. The reason I had stayed up until midnight the night before because I was printing a “do not separate” legal form to take with me to the hospital in case anyone tried to suggest taking my newborn from me. Thankfully, Kaiser seemed to be more reasonable than other hospitals and they were still allowing one birth support person for labor. I knew I would have my temperature screened in the hospital lobby, but my midwife had promised that once I got up to the labor and delivery floor, things would feel pretty normal. However, hospital policies were changing day-to-day, so I felt like I couldn’t be certain of anything. I had the numbers of four different private-practice midwives saved my phone, just in case anything crazy happened at the hospital and I felt like I needed to leave.
Micah pulled up in front of the hospital, a tall building I had never been in before. We had switched insurance providers since Eisley was born, so we were delivering at a different hospital. Due to Coronavirus, tours were no longer being offered, so I had literally asked my midwife at my 38-week appointment, “So if I go into labor, where do I go at the hospital?”
Now the time of uncertainty had come. I hopped out the truck, grabbing a few small items to alleviate Micah’s one bag-bearing trip into the hospital and prayed I would see him again soon. Then I walked into the hospital alone…
