The Story- 2nd time around
30 minutes into Wednesday, Dec. 19—12:30 am "labour" started. It was all new to me, because with Jesse I was induced, and on
top of that, I spent the good part of a year mentally blocking that horrific
and beautiful event. Anyways, it was a bit uncomfortable, nothing debilitating, so an hour later I popped some Tylenol and thought I
should pack my hospital bags, just to be safe, something James’ had been
hounding me to do for about 3 weeks. I should have listened, because true to
Ree form, I couldn’t find my track pants, and packed a pretty useless
assortment of unnecessary things. Then I got on the phone with my pal Kristina, (my makeshift doula) while James' gathered 'data' on his ipad to see if this was the real deal. Any excuse to use Tech is a good excuse for James :) Anyways, after talking for about 30 minutes, she told me I better get my butt to the
hospital because contractions 4 minutes apart and lasting 1 minute are a pretty
sure sign the baby is coming. This was the cue James’ was waiting for, and
Jesse was out the door and tucked in at grandmas before I had a chance to grab
my coat. And then, untrue to James’ form, we drove 150 km/h to the hospital. I
was impressed, and still quite sure that we would be turned around and told to
come back when things actually got serious. Well, that may have been the case,
if they hadn’t made us walk outside, around the hospital to get to labour and
delivery, only to have to walk back to emerg because the hospital’s front doors
were locked. I’m told a lot of women, full term, go jogging around hospitals between contractions to speed things up...
Anyways, we got into the hospital at 2:30 a.m., found a nurse to check me out, and apparently I’m at 6
cm, which means I'm staying put and having a baby. 15 minutes later, I’m at 8. Soon after that, 9 ½… and
then BAM. It’s time to get real. The rest of this story is hard to recap, because
I couldn’t conceive of labour without an epidural, and I kept expecting it to
get way way worse.The fact that I had time to actually breathe between contractions was a small miracle, let alone that I wasn't numb and listless. The nurse kept saying
it was going to be quick, and I kept telling her that I had heard that before,
and I wouldn’t let her dupe me with optimistic statements. But then she gave a very unexpected go-ahead to push. Whaaa?? With Jesse, I waited a day for those
instructions, and then proceeded to push for another day (or at least it felt
like it). Having been in the hospital for all of 45 minutes, this didn’t compute.
Well, 4 contractions and 8 minutes later, Dr. Nwebube (called down to catch my baby
before he started an emergency C-section) delivered Anneliese Marie into the
world, and there we had it. My job was done. Well, at least the first job of getting her out. This job is sort
of ongoing, but I’ll leave that for the next post-- entitled either "Harskamps get evicted", or "Anneliese gets bronchiolitus at 3 weeks old and her parents spend 6 hours in emerg the night before moving day, because 'Harskamps got evicted'"Thoughts? 