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Rebekah's Birth

Rebekah's first birthday (OH MY) is coming up and I remembered that I never wrote her birth story. I am writing if for myself and thought some people here might be interested too.

It was Sunday April 2, and I was 38 weeks pregnant. Friday had been my last day at work and I also visited my OB that day. She said that I was 1 cm dilated, but the baby was still very high up and I had not thinned yet. She would see me next week. OK, fine, I had lots of stuff to do.

Sunday a friend (who was 36 weeks pregnant) and I went to the baby expo in Boston. I drove my new car. We walked for miles that day! I had no problem keeping up.

I bought a new infant car seat (it was the print I wanted :-) and at the end of the day was loading the carseat into the new minivan... and... my water broke! I told MB that I thought my water broke and she looked a little nervous. Anyway, I don't know what I was thinking, I put the emergency blanket from the backseat onto the drivers seat and drove 45 minutes home. :-) On the way, I told MB I thought I might be in labour but was not sure. I had I think two things which felt like menstrual cramps. Anyway, this was about 6:00pm.

When we got home I told my husband that I thought I was in labor. He did not know what to think or if he should believe me. MB was sent home (we canceled plans for dinner) with plans not to tell anyone as I did not know if this was it or if it would take days yet. My Dr. wanted me to call if my water broke so I called. She really did not think anything would come of it (Friday my body was very unready and I was not feeling contractions at 6:30 - 7:00ish). She wanted me to come into the hospital early the next morning and the would induce if nothing was happening because she did not want me to go more then 24 hours after the water broke.

I was bummed. For some reason, I washed all of Rebekah's clothes and started folding them. I was sitting on several towels because whenever I moved fluid would gush out.

We had problems timing the contractions as they were still very weak. They were about 10 to 15 minutes apart. All of a sudden about 11:00 they started coming closer together. They were 4 minutes about at about 12:30 (Dr. did not want us to come in till 3 minutes apart). I called the Dr. and we agreed that I should drive to the hospital, it still did not hurt too much but I was 30 minutes from the hospital and getting nervous. In the car to the hospital, it started hurting. :-O

I had no problem walking up to the maternity ward at 1:00. When I was examined I was at 4cm. They had a lot of trouble getting the 20 minutes monitor strip, the monitors kept on losing the baby and had to be readjusted. I finally convinced them that I had had enough. I was doing OK for a while but felt like I had to go to the bathroom. This went on and I got worse and worse, and started whining. I spent a lot of the time in the bathroom, I think I wanted to be alone, but I also felt like I had to go to the bathroom.

At 3:30 or so, I decided that I wanted some meds. They sent someone up to give me an IV. They had lots of trouble as I have horrible veins.. oh well. Then they did an internal, they had not done any others as my water had broken and they don't want to risk introducing any badies. I was at 8cm!!!! They said it was too late to give me drugs! Boy did I complain! They called the Dr. in a hurry.

At about 4:00 I started pushing and the Dr. got there at 4:10 and found enough time to cut me :-( before Rebekah was born at 4:17. Rebekah was wonderful! 8lb 15oz. She ended up with a little bit of a glucose problem that the &*( pediatrician on call had the nurses give her glucose bottles for.

I called my Mom at home at 6:00 and when she answered the phone, I said hi Nanna. She said WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything after that was great except for a jaundice scare a couple of days later. Pediatrician 1 wanted me to stop breastfeeding at 5 days just as my milk was coming in for 1 day to help the jaundice. Yea, right! Time to find Pediatrician 2.

Amy