Baby Ava: A Birth Story

I had been warned by my doctor (weeks before the thought even entered my head, mind you)  that my little lady was going to be a week late. I was therefore playing games with my mind, convincing myself that I was due on the 12th of July rather than the 5th. Even with these mind games, the thought of an early delivery became more and more appealing as the days went by. By June 9th my hopes were sky high. I knew I was in for it since I still had nearly a month to go before my due date. I was in a full swing nesting phase which drove me crazy. I kept repeating "you still have a month to go", "you still have (enter number here) more working days, and then you can get excited about her coming" in my mind countless times a day.

Regardless, I went to Walmart and bought myself a big yellow yoga ball that I sat on a few hours during work. I bounced, rolled around and kept my fingers secretly crossed that something would happen. I also heard that if you walk on the curb of a side walk (one foot on the upper sidewalk and the other on the street) there is a possiblity that you could speed up the process. Now, I'm not sure if I'm completely gullible or just desperate, but I took my chances and looked like a complete retard I'm sure.

Something did the trick.

Brian and I had our 37 week doctors appointment at 9:00 Monday morning. We decided to head to bed a little earlier the night before, so that we could get a good nights rest and not be too rushed in the morning. Brian fell right asleep, but I seemed to struggle to get any sort of shut eye. I decided to turn on the TV and watch another episode of one of our new favorite TV shows. An hour passed and I still wasn't tired, but forced myself to head to bed (as well as forced my husband to take residence on the couch so that I could sprawl out, poor guy).

I started to feel the usual pelvic, or "lightening" pain and just reminded myself that Ava was slowly moving down and getting herself ready for her big day. I was so restless that night, and getting a bit frustrated that I was still awake once I realized I had been lying there for nearly 2 hours. By this point it was 3:00 in the morning and the "lightening" pain was starting to get worse. I called (yes, on my cell phone) my husband, and told him what was going on. He seemed a bit confused but took out his phone and started to time how far apart each round of pain was from one another.

I however was getting frustrated because I was convinced that these were not contractions. I hadn't even felt any braxton hicks contractions yet, and my stomach wasn't tightening at all when the pain came. Plus, it was June 13th for goodness sake. I was not going to be one of those women that shows up at the hospital convinced she is in labor, just to be sent home. Brian offered to call the hospital just to get some suggestions on how to relieve the pain. We were told to try a hot shower as well as a back massage. I was not a fan of the back massage (weird for me, I know), but gladly got in the shower. The pain however, increased and I found myself on my hands and knees.

All the while, I gradually allowed myself to believe that this was the real thing. (or rather I was secretly hoping it was the real thing because I had been experiencing this intense pain for nearly 4 hours and I wanted it to count for something).

After getting out of the shower and dressed, I had Brian call the hospital once again and they agreed that he should bring me in to see where I was at. Getting to and from the car was quite a battle, and a comical one at that. I found myself on my hands and knees right outside our apartment for our whole neighborhood to see (at 5:30 on a Monday morning. I might have said a small prayer that nobody was leaving their homes to go to work) and right outside the hospital doors. I look back now and just laugh.

We got right into a room where they checked to see how far along I was. 4 centimeters and 95% effaced. They told me they wanted to monitor my progress for the next hour before admitting me. That seemed to be the longest hour of my life. By 6:30 I was at a 5.5. They admitted me and I gladly took the epidural. Once that baby was in, it was smooth sailing. We called both sets of parents, and my parents quickly packed their bags and left Boise as soon as they could.

Since we had no bags packed of our own, I had Brian run home (twice) to grab all the things that I needed. While he was gone I actually took a short nap since I hadn't slept at all that night. By 10:00 I was completely dilated to a 10. Unfortunately I hadn't had my Strep B test done yet (which we were actually going to have done that morning if I hadn't gone into labor), so I had to wait for the antibiotics to go into my system before I started to push. By 12:30 everything looked good and the doctor came in, started getting everything set up and after 15 minutes of pushing, our little Ava Mae was here. We had a super fast labor with no complications and a healthy baby girl at the end. Did I mention that she had (has) the cutest little cry??

It was a whirlwind of a day, but such an incredible one. I still find myself amazed that she is here, nearly a month before she was expected.