Paranoid may be the better term to use. As I prepare for my second go round, I'm more nervous about labor and delivery then I ever was while pregnant with Hayley. With Hayley, I didn't know what to expect and in a way that was a good thing. With Frog Prince, I have an idea of what to expect and that is where the problem lies.My labor with Hayley was really fairly "easy" (as easy as labor and delivery can be, right girls?) On the day of Hayley's birth, I woke up at 4:30am with some mild stomach pains that I really didn't think could be labor. I'd never had Braxton Hicks contractions so I thought that perhaps maybe that was what was going on. However, I was exactly 40 weeks pregnant and ready to reclaim my body and so I did all those things that I heard were supposed to get labor going. I walked Chloe, I pulled weeds, I cleaned up around the house. Still, no pattern to my contractions. By 11am I had 1 or 2 fairly painful contractions and I told Brian that perhaps we should just go down to the hospital to be on the safe side. When we got to the hospital at 11:30am I was 4 cm dilated. By 1:40pm I was fully dilated and we were waiting for my epidural to take effect so I could start pushing. Hayley was born at 2:01pm.
Obviously, I had a quick labor. Which was wonderful. But, that is also the source of my current concern. I keep hearing that second labors are usually much shorter than first labors and quite frankly I'm not the least bit interested in redeeming my 15 minutes of fame by having a newspaper article written about the woman who birthed her baby at home with the help of her toddler and trusty Shih Tzu. I'm into the au natural thing and even considered a natural birth (for about a day) but really, I
On the flip side, I could be one of those anomalies where my second labor is longer and more drawn out then my first. Oh wait, that doesn't sound appealing either!!! Add that to the anxiety that is wreaking havoc on my Type A personality over the fact that I don't know exactly when this baby will come and I'm a paranoid ball of nerves. You can see I'm in quite the conundrum. If I don't blog for awhile, it's because I've gotten all too stressed out about this and have decided to setup a tent to live in the hospital parking lot.
1 comment:
I was right there with you sister! I had Jackson in two hours and got an epidural just 20 minutes before he arrived. I was pushing before the doctor was there just because I couldn't control it. I would say before the epidural it was more uncomfortable and than painful if that is any help. Your body is definitely ready this time around and that is a good thing in your favor.
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