Monday morning, 3/9

As promised, the first update of the actual labor and delivery...

My water broke at home at 5:30am on Monday. It was much less dramatic than I had imaged it would be, thankfully. I worried, as I'm sure every expecting woman has, that I would just burst onto the scene at a less than opportune time. In reality, I went to the bathroom and came back to bed to notice it seemed like I was still going. I returned to the bathroom, and noted it was a pretty steady stream. I woke up hubby and let him know I was going to call the doctor. She ordered us in to triage.

I hadn't had any contractions yet so we both showered, got our things together, even made coffee, before getting out the door. By the time we got into the car, the contractions had started but were still pretty far apart.

As recommended by every woman I have spoken with over the last 10 months, I requested the epidural right away. It seemed a little silly b/c the contractions didn't hurt yet but the fear of going without won over.

In the end this was the right decision - because I was being monitored for pre-eclampsia, they wanted to run blood work before administering the epidural. This took about a half hour. In the meantime they took us upstairs to Labor and Delivery. By the time the person came to do the injection, there was a line of 10 people behind me so the timing was perfect.

Next up, Labor and Delivery...

Not to mention the contractions had gotten more serious and I was getting a sense of why only 3% of Prentice patients deliver naturally...