Anneli's Birth Story: Part 1

[photos by Alisha Hunsaker]

I woke up around 1:45am on Monday, July 14th after barely an hour of sleep.
Suddenly my pants felt wet.
Did I just totally lose control and wet the bed??
Did that finally happen? 
Or did my water break? 
No, I'm not going to get my hopes up about that. 

I sat up in bed, held myself and ran into the bathroom.
My pants were definitely wet through.
But from what I wasn't sure.
Or at least I didn't want to make the wrong conclusion.

Without waking Adam, I decided to take a shower.
I tried to just relax, take my time, and figure out what my body might be telling me.
After the shower, around 2:15am, I decided I should probably tell Adam.
"I think... my water may have broke."
"Are you sure it's not just wet from the shower you just took?"
"That's why I took a shower."
"Are you having contractions?"
"No."
"So what should we do?"
"I have no idea..."

We kind of sat there for a while trying to decide if we should go to the hospital to get checked out or wait until later. My water never broke with Elijah so I didn't have anything to base this new feeling on.
And it wasn't like a big gush of fluid, but more of a trickle.
Like I definitely could've just peed my pants.

Reading online we saw that labor could still take 24-48 hours to start after your water breaks.
And if your water did break, the hospital would make you stay because of risk of infection.
I really did not want to be stuck in the hospital for a whole day especially with Elijah at home.
So we decided to wait.

I told Adam to go back to sleep and I went to get ready in case we had to go to the hospital.

I called my mom around 2:30am to tell her that maybe my water broke but I wasn't sure.
She tried to tell me to go to the hospital but I still wasn't convinced since I only had one, small contraction while I was on the phone with her.
I told her we would go if they got worse and I would keep her updated.
About 15-20 minutes later though, the contractions started to come more regularly.
I told Adam he should probably start getting ready for a definite trip to the hospital.

By 3:00am I started timing the contractions.
I was still managing them okay and didn't really feel any kind of impending death.
So I continued to nonchalantly curl my hair.
{Curl my hair! Which I haven't done in months. Denial anyone???}

Adam came in and checked the contraction timer and started picking up speed.
What he noticed that I didn't seem to  was that my contractions were coming 2 minutes apart.
Kind of an important sign...

A short time later, as I was trying to get dressed, the contractions were starting to really bring me down.
Literally.
I would yell for Adam to come in while I was crouched on the floor to rub my back.
Adam would race in, rub hard & quick, and then race back out trying to put it things together and get our stuff ready. Like get the car seat in the car. Cause oh yeah, we didn't do that yet...

I called my aunt around 3:30am and asked her to meet us at the hospital for take Elijah.
She was driving in from an hour away & we didn't know if she would make it to our house in time.
So knowing our babysitter was on her way, Adam woke up Elijah and we all piled into the car.

Elijah was so tired and so confused.
"Where are we going??"
"We have to go take mom to the hospital."
"And then are we going to go look for bugs and snakes?"
"Sure buddy. We can do that too."
"What's wrong with mom?"
"She's just not feeling good."

And then about 2 minutes into the car ride...
"Adam, I think I need to push!"

{{Part 2 here}}
{{Part 3 here}}