Labor begins

So last Wednesday began like any other day (get up, eat breakfast, get the kids up and dressed and fed.) My friend Lindsey and one of her sweet little girls came by briefly to pick up her maternity clothes that I'd been borrowing. It was a beautiful day and I wasn't feeling too well, though I really couldn't put my finger on why (guess I just figured it was because I was 9 months pregnant!), so the kids and I hung out in the backyard all morning, until naptime. I tried to take a nap but couldn't. By late afternoon I was having contractions 4 minutes apart, but these contractions were just in the front, which they say is false labor. Kevin kept asking if he should come home, but I assured him it was nothing.

My dad called me in the afternoon to ask me if I could do what I could to go into labor because he had a meeting at 4 pm he was not wanting to go to. I said I'd do my best.

Wednesday evenings we have a biblestudy here with two other couples. I started heating up some leftover spaghetti for the kids' dinner and began to sweep and mop the floor. I was still contracting every 4 minutes (like clockwork) but it was still just in the front. At around 5:30 p.m. I thought maybe my water had broken or was leaking or something. I went to the bathroom and pretty much confirmed these findings. I called our cell phone that Kevin was carrying (he was still on his commute home from work), which he did not answer. Sweet. Left a sarcastic message about how great it was that he's been taking the cell in case I go into labor, and got the kids in their seats, and got them their dinner. Called Kevin again, this time he answered, and alerted him to the situation. (He'd be home in a half hour.) Then I called my parents, who also have a biblestudy on Wednesday nights, to tell them I was pretty sure this was the real deal and asking them to come. Sadly they had to boot out their biblestudy. AND sadly, my dad wasn't able to use my labor to get out of his meeting.

I finished sweeping and mopping, Kevin got home, and we decided to just haul the kids with us to the hospital and have my parents pick them up from there once they got down here (they live an hour away from us.) We got them loaded in the car, I finished packing my bag, and Kevin taunted me to no end when I insisted on tidying up the house, picking up the kids' dinner mess, and washing the kids' high chair trays. I told him I couldn't have things in disarray when people are coming over! We also notified our friends that biblestudy was cancelled.

Finally we set out for the "hostipal" as Anna calls it. By this point the contractions were hurting a little and were clearly more than Braxton Hicks. (The above picture is of me right before we left for the esteemed Marian Medical Center.) To be continued...