Lucy's Story Part 1...The Beginning

I'm vain enough to think some of you have been waiting to hear exactly how Miss Lucy made her entrance into this great big world.  :)   For those of you who have been waiting on the edge of your seat for weeks, I apologize for the delay.  It's just such a great story I wanted to have the time to give it justice.  And as you can imagine, life with five young children makes it hard to carve out the time needed.  Sweet Lucy is now over three weeks old and I have finally found some time to share her story...at least the beginning of it.  :)

So this is me.  In the middle of labor.  That started on it's own.  It was awesome.

Monday, October 10th I got up around 4am to use the bathroom.  I didn't really get back into a deep sleep.  A little after 5am, I felt something that jarred me out of that semi-sleep.  I thought that maybe my water had broken, or at least sprung a leak.  I got a little flutter of excitement.  I got up to check in the bathroom.  Nothing much happened.  I decided to go back to bed.  I thought I was feeling a few contractions.  That was new.  And exciting.  But they were irregular and they were 10 minutes apart, then 12, and then 15.  So I stopped timing them and fell back asleep.

Every so often throughout the day, I would have some contractions that caught my attention.  Again, however, they were pretty irregular.  But they were starting to hurt more.  Enough that the girls were noticing and starting to worry about me.  Since the scheduled induction (Oct. 17th) was a week away, I was determined to get in a final week of school with the girls.  So we did school.  I had to take a few breaks to get through some contractions.  All the websites about knowing the difference between real labor and false labor say something about not being able to talk through contractions when it's the real deal.  I had a funny thought as I was breathing through contractions, trying to listen to the girls talk to me during class that day: What does it mean if you can't listen through contractions?!  I was having a hard time paying attention to anything the girls said anytime a contraction hit. :)

Late afternoon came and I met with the high school girl I disciple on Mondays.  I started noticing the contractions picking up.  We wrapped up our meeting a little early.  Somehow we managed dinner, but I don't remember what it was or who made it or if I even ate much!

 After dinner, I decided it was time to let my mom know something might be happening.  She lives three hours away, and she was planning to stay with the other kids during our hospital time.  With four previous inductions and being overdue this time, we were planning to see her the evening of the 16th.  I sent her a text that read, "I don't know for sure, but you might want to have your bags packed."  Of course she called back right away, demanding I call the doctor!  So I did.

The on-call doctor was less than helpful.  Since my contractions were not five minutes apart and regular, I probably didn't need to come in.  But since I lived 30 minutes from the hospital and this was my 5th baby, maybe I should come in and get checked out.  It was my call.  But I should wait an hour to see if the contractions became closer together and more regular.  Okay, doc.  So what do I do?  


I decided to wait the hour.  The contractions seemed to die down again.  So we watched The Sing Off with the kids.  I kept timing contractions.  About 8 minutes apart.  We decided it was time to prepare the kids for a middle of the night house-switch.  We had the kids pack a bag to take to our dear friends' house should we need to head to the hospital in the middle of the night.  We talked to the big kids about it so they wouldn't be scared if we ran into their rooms and woke them and sent them to the car!  The kids went to bed.  We watched TV and then around 10:30pm we went to bed, too.

That's all for now!  I'll get to Part 2 as soon as I can find more time.  Not very exciting for you guys, but wonderful for us and I want to remember it for always.  Trust me, it gets better!  :)