I think it has been over a week since I left a post here. Well, my little Turkey baby decided he wanted to be a Halloween baby, which I guess is fitting since Halloween is my favorite decorating holiday.
My last day physically in the office was Wednesday, 10/27. My plan was to telecommute from home then until 11/12 and my leave would begin on 11/13 with my estimated due date being 11/16. We had a long list of items that we were planning on getting completed the weekend of 10/29 - 10/31 in preparation for Marshall just in case he decided to make his arrival within the next week. Well, little Marshall had other plans. My last doctor's appointment was on 10/27 and I had no signs of going into labor anytime soon.
On Friday, 10/29, I was working my normal day from my living room... conference calls, emails, complaining clients, etc. Around 2:30 in the afternoon I started feeling very strong cramping in my lower abdomin. At that point they were just uncomfortable so I didn't think anything of it. By the time Freddy got home from work around 6:30, the cramping had gotten a little bit stronger but they were still just uncomfortable and were very random as far as timing was concerned. By 7:30 I had to lay down each time a cramp started, but they were still untimeable.
We decided to call the doctor just to be on the safe side. Since the cramping was just very uncomfortable and not necessarily painful, the on-call doctor told me that it could possibly be the early stages of labor. Her advice was to take a hot shower, have a snack, and try to get some sleep. If they started to really hurt then I should call her back.
For the next 2 hours I tried to eat some dinner, but started to feel nauseous so I decided to go lay down for awhile. All of a sudden the cramping went from 25 minutes, to 16 minutes, to 1 minute apart. But they still were not hurting too badly. Just after midnight they started to hurt and pretty much stopped me in my tracks. I told Freddy we needed to go to the hospital even if this wasn't the real thing just to make sure everything was ok. So he called the doctor back and she told him to bring me in and she would meet us there.
We left the house around 12:50 AM. Since there was no traffic, it took us about a half hour to get to the hospital. I couldn't imagine the ride into the city if we were trying to do it during daytime hours! I was obviously in no condition to walk a long distance so Freddy took a chance and parked in a no parking zone in front of the Emergency Room. Of course the security guard waved us right through and before I knew it Freddy had a wheelchair for me.
When we got up to Labor & Delivery, the triage nurse had to enter all of my insurance information into the system since we hadn't gotten a chance to pre-register... one of my to do's for that weekend :) We probably only sat there for 10 minutes but it seemed like forever. It got to the point where I started to feel the urge to push and all of a sudden 2 nurses and an attendee were pushing me through the door to the assessment area. Freddy couldn't come in yet so he ran downstairs to move the car into a parking garage.
When the attendee checked me I was fully dialated and ready to have this baby. Finally they wheeled me down to a birthing room where everything started moving full speed ahead. Since I was fully dialated my dream of an epidural was thrown right out the window so I had to have this kid au natural. When Freddy got back upstairs, I was already pushing so he arrived just in time.
The next few minutes are kind of a blur. I only remember pushing 3 or 4 times when little Marshall William arrived at 2:06 AM on 10/30/10. He was perfectly healthy at 6lbs 9oz and 19in long.
Since everything happened so fast, they didn't have time to even officially admit us so we were able to stay in the birthing room for an extra hour while the nurse took care of all the paperwork. It was nice to just lay and relax for a bit and think about what had just happened. They moved us into the post partum room around 4:00 that morning. By the time we got everything situated, it was almost 6:00 and I realized that I had now been up for 24 hours! So Freddy went home and I tried to get some much needed sleep.
The next couple of days were a blur of visitors and phone calls. Since everything was going well, they said we could go home on Sunday instead of waiting until Monday.
So, we've spent the last week trying to figure out how to be parents and still get our house in order. Let the fun begin!
~AKO
