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| Llyr Scott Christensen Jr. |
I had been having braxton hicks contractions since Tuesday 12/4/12, but they definitely weren't painful and weren't super consistent. Friday evening, Big Llyr and I decided to go do a little Christmas shopping and my non-painful contractions started coming about every 10 minutes and then every 5-6 minutes. So we kept a timer on them and about midnight they tapered off. We had called the nurse and she said that they needed to be consistent for about 2 hours, so we decided to try to go to bed. I had some bleeding at that point so we called the nurse again and she said because it wasn't a gush not to worry about it. We got in bed about 12:30am and I woke up about 1am to painful contractions. They definitely got worse around 1:30am. Big Llyr started to time them and they were about 4 minutes apart. At 2am we called the nurse again and she said that she wanted the contractions to be about 3 minutes apart for 2 hours because this was my first baby. So Llyr and I hunkered down and timed the contractions. I got in the bath for a little bit because 'they' say it helps. It didn't do much. The contractions continued and so at about 4am we called the nurse and said we're coming in. The contractions got more intense and stayed about the same frequency. We grabbed our things, got in the car and headed up to the University hospital. Llyr treated the stop lights as stop signs and so we got there in about 10 minutes. I started to walk in, Llyr grabbed a wheelchair and took me in.
At the U hospital they have an OB emergency area and so we went there first and the nurse we had been talking to came to check me. Well, I was dilated to a 4 and so I was wheeled off to Labor and Delivery. From the hours of 5-7am was a little bit more intense. I asked for an epidural and also because I am Group B positive I needed to have an IV so I could get my doses of Anti-Biotic before the baby came. (They like to have 4 hours to give the medicine) Well my veins kept blowing and so 5 sticks and 3 nurses later I finally had my IV going. Then a few minutes the anesthesiologist came in and started to explain the epidural to me along with risks and benefits. So, with me contracting through it all we got everything explained. My contractions were definitely more intense and so it is not surprise that by the time the epidural was in I was already at a 6. I'm glad I got the epidural because I had to wait at least 4 hours before I was allowed to deliver the baby because of the Anti-Biotic. I would have been quite beat by that time without some help. They were going to break my water, but decided not to right away so I wouldn't go too quickly. They checked me before my first dose of penicillin was done and I was already at an 8, so they had to start the drip much quicker. The penicillin finally was done around 11am. They then broke my water. It had a little muconium in it so they got the pediatricians on board to be there for the birth so Little Llyr wouldn't aspirate any of it. I started pushing just after 11:30am and had a baby at 12:20pm.
What a miracle!