It was Thursday Jan 23rd, I had my 38 week appointment (2 days shy of 38 weeks) I was effaced 80% and dilated 2 cm. My Dr said she could strip my membranes and i'd probably go into labor in the next two days but Darin wasn't in town yet so she said when he gets here and I come back next week she could do it then, so we had some time to think about it. I also only gained 1lb this past week, so a total of 32lbs all together, not bad.....hopefully the next two weeks will be another 1lb lol. The internal checks always make me a little crampy later that day so at night while eating dinner I just ignored it. I'd talked to Darin before he went to bed because he'd just flown from Antigua (he worked all week there) to Barbados, he was tired and had to be at the office the next morning so he ate dinner, left his suitcase still packed and headed to bed. Me and my dad watched Thor 2, then I headed to bed.
Friday the 24th, 4:30am came around and as usual around 4am I get up to pee....every day....so this wasn't anything new. I peed and got back into bed but couldn't get comfortable, I still had some cramping. I gave it a few mins and then thought maybe I needed to pee again but when I got up I felt like I was going to pass out, so I went into my moms office to ask her to get me some water (my mom works from home and works the early shift from about 2am on), I have a syncope (not sure you knew that) so passing out sometimes is pretty normal for me. Mom came back with some water and was finished working, but by this time I was so uncomfortable in bed and I was timing these cramps because I wasn't sure what it was so just in case I decided to time them. My mom asked if she could go back to bed or if she needed to take her shower so we could head to the hospital......I wasn't sure what to tell her so she just took her shower in case, lol. Meanwhile, it's about 5:40am and I called Darin....I told him I wasn't sure if it was labor but i'm uncomfortable and they hurt and they're about 5 mins apart so it seemed like labor. He told me I was fine, and to try and relax and not freak myself out....I agreed, I was fine, don't freak out.....but these "cramps" i'm timing were 5 and 6 mins apart and the passing out feeling for every cramp was starting to freak me out. I told him i'd call him later and let him know how I was, so we said our love yous and hung up. I decided to lay on the floor so I wouldn't fall if I was up and passed out, I had Casper keeping me company on the floor and he never left my side. When my mom came back, she brought my dad and by 6:00am we decided to grab my stuff and head to the hospital just in case. My dad helped get everything in the car and my mom and I headed to Winnie Palmer Hospital. During the drive there the cramps finally turned into labor and I realized, THIS. WAS. IT. I wasn't going home like i'd thought I would be. We got to the hospital by 6:30am, and at this point I couldn't walk the pain was so bad...how, from 4:30-6:30 is it this bad?? People say they take showers and do stuff when they start labor, not in my case. I had my eyes closed trying to focus on NOT passing out because this labor was intense and it didn't give me any breaks of relief whatsoever.....I was 5cm, got admitted and the labor was just a constant 10 of 10 for pain and one long 3 hr contraction. My mom called Darin back and told him this was it, I was in labor and it's going fast....of course Darin starts to freak out because it's 2 weeks early, he's not in the states, he doesn't even have a flight, he wants to be with me so bad and not miss the birth. He couldn't believe I was in labor when an hour before that I called him and sounded ok. With my eyes still closed, I had no idea where I was, what people were doing to me, didn't know what anyone looked like and I can only remember pieces of the next 3 hours. With out Darin there I did my best to hold it together, I can remember almost loosing it and crying my eyes out because I just wanted him there but I had to do this for Gemma so I sucked it up and tried to just focus as best I could. It's now about 9:30am and somehow I had changed clothes and was brought up to labor and delivery for my epidural (don't remember a thing). I couldn't sit up because if I moved a centimeter i'd go right into a contraction again so we tried with me laying down, clinging to the bars on the side of the bed (where i'd been gripping for the last 3 hours), but when that didn't work, I HAD to sit up to get the epidural. That may of been the worst part of labor, moving to the sitting up position. Finally the epidural worked and my passing out feeling went away so I finally got to open my eyes, see my nurses and actually talk to them :) I was a whole new person haha!! I told the nurse I felt like I gotta poop (tmi, sorry....what did you expect reading a birth story??), so she checked me and I had gotten to 10cm all on my own, WHOOP! GO ME! So when the epidural was in full effect they told me I could push because I was ready, but I had to get Darin on facetime first. The internet at the hospital was pretty crappy and between 2 phones, 2 ipads and my macbook we couldn't get him on video...very frustrating, but we finally downloaded this video app and it worked great, just like facetime. The nurses decided to let me enjoy my epidural for a little while since I hadn't had a break all morning, so when we finally got Darin on video, it was push time!! It was about 2 hrs later (11:30am) as Darin sat at work in his office (in Barbados), my phone propped up next to me in the bed, I started pushing with my contractions. I had my mom on the left leg and Laura on my right leg to help me push. In the middle of contractions we talked and joked with the nurses until the next one. Darin eventually had to hang up, connect to the 3G and call back as he drove home to grab his suitcase lol. The whole time he would tell me to push and encouraged me in between contractions just like he was really there, he did a fantastic job :) When he got home and got his bags, he told me I had 10 mins and he had to leave for the airport to catch his flight to Miami (my brother was picking him up and driving him to Orlando, there were no connecting flights to Orlando that night....figures). I pushed her out just before he left the house....he was standing on our patio out front as he watched our daughter come into the world. Thanks to my mom, she picked up my phone and had the video on Gemma the whole time, so he got to see her cry for the first time, get her cord cut and see that full head of dark hair. She was here, she was healthy and she was perfect!! Gemma Lyn was born at 1:16pm, weighing 6lbs 3oz and measured 19.5 inches long, our tiny peanut :)
I got to hold her for a brief moment but she had to go to the transitional nursery to have her breathing and her sugar levels monitored. Once I was ok and got up to my room, I got to go visit her in the nursery and hold her more but couldn't take her until her sugar levels stabilized. I had my family stay for a bit and the Doty's came up for a while but visiting hours were over so they had to leave. Laura stayed with me for a while and Gemma finally came into my room at around 10:30pm....for the first time she was all mine. Darin got to the hospital at 12:30am, he picked up Gemma, sat in the rocking chair and stared at her for the next hour before we both went to bed.
This was SUPER long.....i'll catch you up on the last 2 1/2 weeks with my next post :) but until then, here's a picture of our new little family :)
Here's Darin on our porch watching Gemma being born:
