MJ #1’s birth story
March 8, 2010
I had been having some increasing contractions, but they
were still very irregular. I
started to chart them to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. With Jackson my water had broke so I
knew that labor was starting. I went
to work that day and sat down most of the day in front of the overhead
projector. Nothing was out of the
ordinary so I just kept writing them down and keeping track.
March 9, 2010
I went to school just like normal. I was continuing to track my contractions throughout the
day. They weren’t terribly strong,
but they were there. Still
irregular, with the shortest between them around 7 minutes. I packed up my bags and remember
looking at the clock as I was leaving – it was 3:32pm. On my ride home I called the nurse
on-call and asked when I should head to the hospital (my original due date was
March 14th). She again
told me what I knew, that they needed to be 5 minutes or less apart before I
went. Our home was 30 minutes from
the hospital where I was to deliver, so I wanted to make sure I gave myself
plenty of time. I told her they
were inconsistent and all over the place, so she said just wait until they get
consistent and then head that way.
I arrived at my house and went inside to see JJ and my
mom (JJ was 3 at the time). I
had some presents from friends/family that had arrived that day in the
mail. As I opened the presents, my
contractions started to intensify.
I started to write them down again – and at this point I decided that my
husband (who worked about 15 minutes away at the local university) should start
to make his way home. By the time
he would arrive we should be ready to start heading to Dover to the hospital. Only problem was my mom had our car, so
she had to go pick him up. She
loaded JJ up and started heading that way.
Once my mom left things really picked up steam. I went and laid down on our bed to
hopefully relax. The contractions
intensified more. I started to
feel light headed, so I got up and got a drink that had some sugar in it. This is when I felt the urge to go to
the bathroom. I walked into the
bathroom, sat on the toilet and had a BM.
The contractions were really strong at this point. My husband called to
check on me – which I could barely talk.
He tried to get anything out of me – and I really could not say
anything. At this point, still on
the toilet I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom again. After about 10 seconds I realized, this
was not a ‘go to the bathroom’ feeling.
This was a ‘need to push this baby out’ feeling.
I was still home alone – and at this point terrified. Brandon was trying to still talk to me
on the phone as he was making his way back from work. I still was pretty much a mute because I was in so much
pain, and also holding the baby in. He made the decision to get off the phone
with me and call an ambulance. He
called me right now to let me know they were on the way. Only problem was there was no way I was
getting up to walk to our door to unlock it. I was laying on my bed, two cats curling up next to me, just
scared to death I was going to be alone in our apartment having our second
child. Brandon stayed on the phone
with me the whole time just talking me through it. It took about 10 or so more minutes before he finally made
it to our house – still beating the paramedics. When he got there he instantly went and found towels,
scissors, and started to get water going to boil on the stove. Yea – TERRIFIED. Haha.
The paramedics got there, examined me and told me I was nowhere
near having a baby. I about ripped
the guys head off. My contractions
were varying from 1 minute apart to as short as 20 seconds apart at this point. Never regular. They put me on the gurney and wheeled
me to the ambulance. Two awesome paramedics
stayed in the back with me and talked to me the whole time we traveled 8 miles
to the closest hospital (not the one I had planned to deliver at). When they were timing them they were
trying to make me laugh – they had just gone through OB training the day before
and thought my call was a practice run. So they knew exactly what to do.
The ambulance driver blew through lights and got us to the
hospital in about 10 minutes (mind you – this was all in the I-95 corridor of
Delaware. HEAVY traffic).
When they pulled me into the L&D triage, the nurse
listened to MJ #1’s heart to make sure all was good. It had not occurred to me until this point that she could
have been stressed. Glad I didn’t
worry until then! She then checked
me – and when she did I screamed.
The nurse’s face was priceless.
She quickly removed her gloves, threw up the sides of my bed and started
yelling down the hall to the nurses station. They were going to have to move fast because MJ #1 was
ready to be born – probably on the next contraction. She got at the head of the bed and Brandon was at my
feet. We pick up a nurse on the
way to the elevator, just incase something happened while we were on our way to
the delivery room. We were
literally sprinting as fast as you can with a hospital bed down the
hallway. We got in the elevator,
made it out to the delivery floor and right when they pushed me into my
delivery room a contraction was coming.
I was in the hospital and I was not waiting anymore! I warned them, to which all the nurses
started telling me to hold on because nothing was ready – they were still
getting gloves on and there was no doctor there to deliver. I wasn’t waiting though – the 1st
year resident literally walked in the room right when I started to push and caught
MJ #1. No lie – caught her. And then the pain was gone. MJ #1 was born at 5:14pm on March 9th,
2010 – 39 weeks, 4 days, 6 pounds, 8 ounces, 19 inches long. Girl had a schedule to keep! She was
perfect – but the doctor told me that the next time, if there was one, that I
needed to plan my delivery. I
delivered way too fast! There were no pictures in the delivery room - things happened so quickly we had nothing of her first hour.
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| JJ and baby sister. One of the first pictures of MJ #1. |
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