On Sunday, August 17th, 2003, I woke up around 5 a.m. having contractions. They were about a minute or so long, and 15 to 20 minutes apart. Not bad, just enough to wake me up.
The very first thing I did was to go downstairs and eat a tuna sandwich and drink my caffeine for the day (a can of Dr. Pepper, natch). Then I went back upstairs and took a shower. By 6 a.m., my contractions were stronger, so I woke up Keith and told him to take a shower, and that he probably wasn’t going in to work that day.
By 7 a.m., I was having up to 3 contractions in a 5 minute period. We double checked our packing of supplies, and loaded the car, arriving at Shawnee Mission Hospital around 7:30 a.m. The nurses checked me, and since I was dilated to 3.5 cm and 100% effaced with pretty regular contractions, they told me I wasn’t going anywhere and admitted me. (Lots o’ paperwork, even with me pre-registering.) We called our parents and Sam (Samantha), letting them know what was going on. Sam arrived about a half hour after we called her, and Keith’s mom, Jan, arrived around noon. (My parents live in Springfield, MO, and didn’t make it up until Monday.)
My blood pressure was pretty high, so they kept me in my room hooked up to the monitor pretty much most of the morning. Sometime after Jan arrived it had lowered enough that they let me walk around the halls with just my I.V. pole. I asked for the hydro-tub* to be hooked up in my room while I was walking around. About the 4th or 5th lap, my water broke in the middle of the hallway! It was pretty funny. They made me go back to my room since they apparently didn’t want me leaking all over their halls! But the tub was pretty much hooked up by that point, so it was okay.
I stayed in the hydro-tub for about 30 minutes or so, the first 20 being completely pain free. It was a wonderful thing!
* At Shawnee Mission, they have this really cool Hydro-tub that can be hooked up in your room. It’s like a really big bathtub on rollers.
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