Now she looks like a little angel, but I know we've got a troublemaker on our hands. According to the rules, Clara should still be inside right now and preparing for the world. Little Clara had her own plans, though.
Note: This is a description of "Labor Day" that got way too long. If you don't want to hear about contractions and some such, or if you just don't care, don't read this post! You can scroll down to the pictures, they're safe.
Thursday, November 1 was a normal work day for me. My major accomplishment for that day was to file all my applications (good that I did! I was contemplating leaving some for the weekend...). I had lunch with Joe, who hadn't even known I was pregnant yet, and I was telling him how unprepared we were for the baby - fortunately we didn't expect her for another several weeks. Chris was out of town in Hawaii that week. I was too lazy to go out at night, so I spent all evening playing Civ 4, and finally went to bed around 11pm. That's late for a woman who is 8 months pregnant! It's just the Civ game that kept me up that long.
At around 1:30am, I woke up with some contractions. I had been having contractions for several months, but they had never been painful before. In the daze of being half-asleep, I somehow explained the pain to myself, went to the bathroom and back to sleep. When I woke up again around 2 or 2:30, I couldn't fall back asleep. Still, I didn't believe in the contractions. I thought obviously this couldn't be real. It was the one week where Chris was gone, and anyway it was way too early. I was all by myself at home (well what good can two sleeping kitties do?) and just tried ignoring the facts for a while. Around 3am or so I called Chris - actually the logical thing to do, since it was only 9pm in Hawaii, and I didn't want to wake anybody in Philly up for my still-not-believable labor. We spent 40 minutes or longer on the phone, the conversation consisting mostly in me denying what was happening and worrying about waking up people for nothing. I kept having contractions at 5-10 minutes apart. Then Chris finally convinced me to call the hospital. They told me to come in.
Chris woke up our friends Yehuda and Olivia, who drove me to the hospital. I still couldn't believe what was happening. I think they couldn't either. When Olivia and I told the security guard we wanted to go to Labor and Delivery, he asked me "Who do you want to visit?" As I looked at him open-mouthed, he finally realized, "Oh, for yourself?!!" Duh.
It was about 4:30am when I got to the "Perinatal Evaluation Center". And here I was for the next several hours. The hospital staff thought (just as I still did) that the contractions might just stop by themselves, and so they kept me in bed attached to several monitors (one for the baby, one for the contractions). It was weird for me because I didn't really want the contractions to be happening, so a lot of the tips from the birth classes didn't really apply. Having Olivia there definitely helped - although I felt bad for her because she couldn't really do much other than watch me. In retrospect, not much happened through those several hours in the PEC. I watched the sun rise over Philly's skyline, which was nice. I talked to Chris some - he must have been very worried. Unfortunately I didn't really feel up to talking to him very much either, because I was mostly concentrating on myself.
By about 10am, my contractions had gotten a lot stronger, and my cervix had also dilated more (it was at 4 cm now). So we knew the labor was real and I was actually going to have a baby that day. It still seemed incredible to me. And although Chris had already booked his flight for in a few hours, he was still halfway around the globe! How could his daughter be born without him there? Somehow it took an hour until I was actually moved across the hallway to Labor and Delivery. I was in lots of pain. At some point, I remember I was contemplating how women decide to have second children... I was thinking one must forget.
Anyway, from then on things went very fast. Some things were very annoying, and exactly the reason why I didn't want to have a hospital birth in the first place: doctors kept coming in to have me sign consent forms; every single person asked me if I wanted an epidural, and after some discussion reassured me that I could change my mind any time; and someone even asked me if I had a living will (I'm here just to give birth - what kind of encouraging question is that?!). As the anesthesiologist had me sign consent forms for anesthesia during a possible emergency cesarean (and pointed out that that would be easier if I had an epidural), I asked him to call the nurse because I felt I was pushing. The nurse came together with the midwife, whom I actually knew from some of my checkups. They told me I was complete and not to push yet, because they had to gown up first. Easier said than done. It had been only about an hour since I got into Labor and Delivery, and after 17 minutes of pushing (it seemed much longer to me), the little munchkin was born.
Afterwards, the nurse and midwife congratulated me and told me that I did very well for a natural birth - I hadn't even cursed or bit them. I wonder what kind of patients they normally get...
