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***Disclaimer - This is incredibly long and detailed, but I hope that the following story could serve as a bit of inspiration to any woman who ever finds herself in my situation.
Thursday, May 15 was my last day of work before maternity leave. I went in that morning in great spirits, though on the train ride in I was feeling a few contractions, pretty typical of what I had been feeling for weeks. At 8 am, I sat at my desk joking with my boss about how many times I’ve felt contractions that turned out to be nothing.
At 8:30 am, I felt a pretty painful contraction that was definitely unlike any others I had felt. Then, I felt a little ooze, but I assumed I was imagining it. I went to the bathroom, and there was my mucous plug! I have never been so excited to see something so gross! Since my first birth was an induction at 41 weeks with absolutely zero signs of labor, I was so thrilled to see my body showing the “signs.”
I had another hard contraction on the way back from the bathroom, so I stopped by my boss’s desk and said “um… I may need to leave soon… I’ll let you know.”
I sat back down and painful contractions started immediately. I figured I’d try timing them and sure enough, they were 3 minutes apart, 60 seconds long. I was still able to talk through them, so I called my aunt to have her keep me company on the phone and distract me while I counted them. I decided to count them at least until John got to work at 9 so I could tell him if anything was happening.
By the time he got in at 9, I told him I thought we really needed to leave. Shortly after, He came over to my desk and we took a look at the train schedule to figure out which train would get us home. I had wanted to labor at home as long as possible before going to the dreaded hospital. As we sat there it became very clear that the contractions were so hard and close together that there was no way we were going to make it home. Since we were already downtown, the hospital was only a half hour cab ride away.
We went downstairs and flagged down a cabbie (who was NOT thrilled about letting a laboring woman into his cab.) We arrived at the hospital somewhere right around 10 am, and at that point I could not talk at all through the contractions, and there was almost no break between them.
Holly, our doula, met us there. The resident checked me and said I was completely effaced, 0 station, but only about 2 cm dilated. Right away we got me into the shower to try to ease some of the pain, but the hospital shower was more like a cold water closet – absolutely no relief at all – so I only stayed in for about a half hour. The nurses were supposed to be getting the tub ready for me, but they never got around to it. Once I got back to the bed, the contractions were so hard and fast that I was yelling through them and the urge to push was unbearable. Holly couldn’t believe that I was only at 2 cm when I was having transition-type contractions along with the urge to push, so she ran out to get someone to check me again while I was screaming in pain. We all thought I had to be in transition, but when they said I wasn’t even close, I started begging for the epidural. I wanted to go without it because I knew it would complicate my delivery, and my previous epidural experience was awful, but I just couldn’t bear that much pain for another minute. I was starting to lose it. Of course, I felt so guilty because I wanted to do this naturally, and I was so scared that it meant the beginning of the end of my “attempt” at VBAC. I felt like a failure in front of Holly, but she was great about it and said that she didn’t blame me one bit with the type of contractions I was having and it being so early. I
