A Green Girl's Guide to Food and Life: Happy Birthday Bugga

This time 4 years ago, I was laying in a hospital bed, exhausted, after being in labor all night. I was lucky, I had a pretty smooth labor and delivery!

All day on the 10th, I cooked and cleaned! I couldn't sit still. My mother kept telling me that I was going to go into labor that night. My response.... "GOOD!" I was 2 days past my due date, and ready to meet my girly! That night, after dinner, I noticed that I seemed to be leaking fluids. I waited a while and it continued, so around 10pm I called the Dr.

Of course, my Dr. wasn't on call that night, but the one who was told me to wait an hour to see if I started having contractions. The slowest hour of my life finally passed and then I called the Dr. back. The conversation went something like this...

Dr.: "Have the contractions started yet?"
me: "No, but I'm still leaking."
Dr.: "Well, you're probably not in labor."
me: "Don't you think I should go to L&D just to make sure. Last thing I want is a dry birth!"
Dr.: "Oh, well, you may be right then. Head that way. I'll tell them to expect you."

This conversation completely sums up why I'm not a Dr. person! They never seem to know what they're doing!

So, off we went to the hospital. I got there about 11:30 and they hooked me up to all the monitors, got me in a gown, and put me in bed. We went over what was going on, and then the nurse came in with this tiny strip of paper wrapped around the tip of her finger. She explained to me that she was going to swab it around my you-know-what and if it turned blue, then my water had burst.

I still laugh when I think about it, because it always reminded me of the strips restaurants use to check the sanitizer water!

Needless to say, she swabbed and it turned dark green. "Well I don't think I've ever seen it turn that color!" These are not the words you want to hear when you are having your first kid. I was not there to be a first on anything!

The nurse concluded that I was not in labor, that I was urinating on myself.

Now... I know that as your pregnancy progresses, that sometimes, some people will have leaks like this! I am not saying anything bad about it, at all!

I just wasn't one of these people. I hadn't had a problem with that at all during my pregnancy! I informed the nurse of this, with which she tried to placate me! "It's ok to admit that you have some leakage honey!"

For 1: Don't honey me... you do not know me... at all!

For 2: If I tell you I haven't had a leakage problem, then I HAVEN'T HAD A LEAKAGE PROBLEM!

For 3: Never, EVER, argue with an aggravated, tired, pregnant woman!

So she then called the Dr and filled him in. He told her to slap a pad on me, "just to make sure I actually had a leakage of some sort." Because I would totally make this up! Oh yes, laying in a hospital for hours, being accused of peeing on myself, is just loads of fun!

Off the little nurse went to get me a pad. I put it on, kept it there for about an hour, and then called her back. She looked at it, and then said, "Oh, well that's not urine at all, is it?" At this point I just wanted to smack her in the forehead and say, "DUH LADY!" but i didn't. I kept my cool and just nodded.

She called the Dr. back and he ordered an ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid levels. By this point I'm sleepy, hungry, and very, very cranky! So sometime between 1 and 2am, the U/S tech comes in. I get the fabulously, sticky, cold jelly on my belly, and away she goes to take a visual tour of my uterus. She looks at it for approximately 3 seconds, and exclaims, "You're definitely in labor! You're fluid is getting low."

She calls the nurse back into the room, and shows her what I had know all along, and then explains to me that my girly's head is so low, that she blocking my cervix. Hence the reason my water was slowly leaking.

YAY! I was actually in labor. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. The Dr came in and pushed my girly back up a little, so that she wouldn't have a cone head, and my water could proporly bust. Buddy, when he done that the contractions started! After a while I ended up getting an epidural, and at 7:24am my beautiful baby entered to world!