So, yeah. It’s been awhile.. Hmm.
*blush*
ANYWAYS.
Since we last spoke, this happened:
 |
| Very, very pregnant |
..and it went on like that for another 7 days.
On June 29th, I was having real, live contractions, but refused to believe in them due to the fact that I was 5 days over due and convinced that I would not, in fact, be giving birth at all. I went to bed figuring that if the contractions they really meant business, they would have to wake me up and convince me.
The next morning (June 30th) I woke up around 7am with what could only be described as shotgun-explosion-contractions but they only lasted about 15 seconds, so I dug my heels into my denial and sent J.D. to work, promising that I would call at the first “real” sign of “labor” (complete with the sarcastic finger-quotes).
At around 9am, I called my midwife to check in and tell her about the not-labor pains I was having and beg for another pep-talk; I was determined to have a natural labor but was quickly loosing faith that my body even worked that way. She’ been talking me off the please-for-the-love-of-God-just-break-my-water ledge on a daily basis. Fortunately, she is well trained in crazy-pregnant-woman and convinced me to drop by the birthing center “just to be sure”.
Since I was positive that I was not in labor and incredibly annoyed that anyone would have the nerve to think that I was (I am a *peach* when I’m 41 weeks pregnant), I left Billy in charge of the younger kids and had my mother drive me and Jack to the birthing center.
At 10am, my midwife, Jean, told me that she had a pretty good feeling that I would be having a baby that day, and that I should call J.D. – I disagreed and said I wanted to go back home. After much moaning and groaning, I finally compromised – mom and Jack and I would go walk around for an hour and come back – if there was any changes, I would stay and if not, I could go home. I called J.D. at work and told him to start meandering toward the birthing center, but not to hurry.
20 minutes into my hour of walking, my short, bursting contractions turned into real-live, HANG.ON.CAN’T.WALK.MIGHT.DIE contractions, so we started to make our way back to the center. Somewhere in there, I called J.D., and told him to go get the kids where they needed to be, (T & V would still have to go to their moms’ and but B & B would have to come to the center, where they and Jack would go to my moms) but still told him not to hurry.
 |
| Exhibit A: Red Light Camera... He hurried. |
This is where things really got moving.
Jean said I should go ahead and get into my comfortable clothes and start to try to do some relaxation breathing while mom went out to the car to bring in my stuff and called J.D. again.
I went from denial to ready-to-push in a matter of minutes – but I was still determined to wait for J.D. to get there. All I could think of was ‘he already almost missed this’ and I was getting panicky at the thought of doing it without him.
When Jean came back into the room, she knew by looking at me that we were out of time and moved the birthing ball to the bed – I draped my top half over it just as my water broke.
Just as Jean started telling me that I was going to have to stop trying to hold back the urge to push, J.D. came flying into the room yelling “I’M HERE-I’M HERE-IT’S-OK-I-MADE-IT-I’M-HERE!”
And (very) shortly after that, so was Jonny.
 |
| Jonathan Jude Darley - Born June 30th, 2010 |
All 10 pounds and 22 inches of him.
