The Beginning of a Birth Story?

Adam and I went out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's with a friend who is visiting from out of state on Saturday evening. I was uncomfortable sitting in the booth and kept shifting to try to get comfortable. When we stood up to leave, I thought that I may have felt my water break. I wasn't sure, and I didn't have contractions really, so just ignored it until we got home.

When we got home, we started getting ready for bed (at this point it was about 7:30 pm), and I told Adam. He Googled it on his phone to see if we could figure out if it really had or not, but we couldn't really tell. He suggested that I call the hospital to see what they had to say.

The nurse, Erin, that I talked to said that since I was a VBAC that I should come in for monitoring and then we could see what to do from there. I was hoping that they would just send me home, and I could crawl in bed.

We got there about 8pm, and got checked in. Erin, the same nurse that I talked to on the phone, hooked me up to the monitors, and did an internal exam. I told her that last Tuesday I was 60% effaced, and the baby was in a +1 position. She checked and said that the baby was very low, and asked how I managed to walk. But, she couldn't reach my cervix to see how effaced I was or if I was dilated, because it was behind baby's head. So she said she would be right back with a "long-fingered friend" who might be able to check.

A few minutes later, she came back with her "long-fingered friend" and she could tell that I was still about 60% effaced, but said she couldn't reach to see if I was dilated without making me really uncomfortable. So we decided that was good enough. Erin asked if we would like to be monitored for an hour, and then we could go from there. I agreed.

I flipped on the TV and flipped through the channels until I found a channel with NCIS on. So Adam and I sat and watched. I wasn't really feeling any contractions, but was getting uncomfortable, so decided to sit up. Not too long after that Erin showed up at the door and said, "Oh you're sitting up! Lay back down." I guess the heart rate monitor was picking up my heart rate, not baby's and she got nervous. I laid back down, and her heart rate was picked up again, and all was good.

Around 9 pm, Erin came back in and looked at the printout from the monitors. She said that all was looking good, and that we could go home if we like. So she had me sign some papers, and off we went.

************* to be continued *************