I think I have gone into labor approximately sixteen times.
I have yet to have this baby.
For the past two weeks I have had all the signs that the big moment is but hours away. I’ve had cramps, back aches, time-able contractions that feel like my stomach is making a fist and then punching my liver with it. Goo is escaping from me at an alarming rate and while I went to bed looking like a normal person, I woke up bearing more than a passing resemblance to a Campbell soup kid.
To make matters worse, my doctor keeps telling me things. Things like my effacement percentage and how wide I’m dilated. While at first it was exciting to hear that my body was progressing along, it’s now just super annoying knowing that really, it all means crap. Some women walk around three centimeters dilated for weeks, other progress from one centimeter to ten in hours. Telling me how much progress I’ve made is pretty much the same as telling me how much milk you have in your fridge at home.
Neither one is going to be able to tell me when this child is going to get the heck out of my uterus.
I have twice told my husband that this was it. That we were going to be headed to the hospital within the hour, only to end up sitting at home watching a zombie movie and apologizing a short time later because my contractions had stopped.
As a first time mom I don’t really know what labor feels like. It’s not that I have remained blissfully unaware on purpose, quite the contrary. I have purchased and read all the big titles on pregnancy, What to Expect, Girlfriend’s Guide, Mayo’s Clinical Guide, all pertinent facts absorbed and filed away. I am also a proud member of a half dozen online sites with doctors and experts and chat groups, all designed to feed me way too much information and give me anxiety attacks about the nitrate levels in the hotdogs I ate before we knew I was pregnant. I also know the statistical percentage that I will have a c-section (1 in 4, 1 in 3 at the specific hospital in which I am delivering). I know the definition of placental previa, signs of hypertension, and all the colors a normal mucus plug may be.
Labor is trickier than mucus.
Everything that could be a sign of labor could also be a sign of walking around sharing a body with a full grown baby. They could also be sign of constipation or alien abduction—how the heck am I supposed to know what’s really going on?
The three major signs that “for real” labor is about to begin seem to be loss of the mucus plug, regular contractions, and when your water breaks. Great, straightforward. Water breaking, should be a clear, very noticeable sign. A gallon or so of water leaking into your pants—can’t miss it.
Well, it ends up, yes you can.
A slow trickle is far more common than the whole gush of fluid so often portrayed in the movies. So … how much fluid is a trickle? And what kind of fluid should I be looking for? Pregnant ladies deal with many little ebbs and flows throughout the day, heck! Whenever I stand up it’s like playing the dry pants lottery. I had pretty significant leak a couple of days ago so I called my doctor’s office, went in, and upon further testing it ended up not to be amniotic fluid, but some mystery stuff, at least that’s the fancy, scientific term for it. Mystery stuff.
As for the regular contractions, no joke, I get those every day. Every day I get contractions that come at regular intervals, get really intense, and then … go away. They just go away and leave me clutching my hospital suitcase in one hand and my cell phone in the other. This happens every single day! I’ve stopped telling my husband because I’m convinced that this baby is never really coming out. She going to stay up there forever and no contraction, no matter how strong will push her out.
