Hazel's Birth Story | Part 1

It was Wednesday, the 5th. Six days before Miss Hazel's scheduled due date. In my head I just knew she would be early. I had been having the most ridiculous amount of Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks by then, so I knew not to get my hopes up. Somehow even after two previous pregnancies, you kind of are in denial about how painful the "real" contractions actually are.

We tucked in the girls that night and I had a huge sad feeling come over me, like it might be the last time we put only two little girls to bed. I gave them both an extra hug and then waddled my way to bed. Around 11:00 I started having pretty painful contractions. I had been timing them for about 45 minutes and they were a minute long, every 4 minutes on the dot. So I was planning on waking Anthony up so we could make our way to the hospital. I ran to the bathroom and climbed back into bed and they completely disappeared.

Talk about bummed. 

But like I had said many nights before, "I'm too tired to give birth tonight." So I enjoyed the last few hours of sleep while I could. I woke up a couple hours later with what I thought was me peeing myself. I've never experienced my water breaking on its own, so I even thought it may have been that. I ran to the bathroom and.... blood. So much blood, I seriously almost passed out. (Kudos by the way to the dads out there who witness so much worse than that. I may be experiencing childbirth, but thank you baby Jesus I don't have to see it!)

Someone isn't used to the sleep deprivation like I am. 

I woke up Anthony in a panic and tell him to call the midwives because I've never had this happen before and I am literally freaking out. They tell me to make my way to L&D and that as long as I was feeling the baby move, it should be ok. So I wake up mama and hand her the baby monitor and am just numb as we make our way to the car.

We get there 15 minutes later, get checked in and everyone seems to be confused as to why I am bleeding so much. But the sound of her heartbeat brings me so much relief that I honestly don't really care at that point how she decides to make her appearance. I was going for my second VBAC so I was starting to prepare myself for the worst case scenario. There obvious concerns are previa, or the placenta detaching so I get my first sonogram. Not really helpful.

Hours later the bleeding finally seems to be stopping but we still have no idea what caused it. I get another sonogram. You know the fun, internal kind. What felt like forever later, we finally get word that it's definitely not coming from the placenta so we are finally allowed to go home. It's about 1:30pm at this point and we had been there for about 9 hours. I am starving, exhausted and pretty annoyed to be honest. So we make our way home and I enjoy a premature Subway cold cut, because the thought of listeria is the last thing on my mind right now and I am going to enjoy it dammit.

Harper was down for a nap when we got home, so we convinced Quinn to take one with us in our bed. But not before I wash the hospital off of me in the hottest shower I have ever taken. I probably snoozed for about an hour before I was woken up by a random contraction. So I waited for Harper to get up and happily scooped her out of her room and gave her as many cuddles as she would let me. We made our way downstairs while Daddy and Quinn finished napping upstairs. We went on about our day, fed the girls dinner and got ready for bed. We both fell asleep almost immediately and then.... of course. Contractions. The "real" kind.

I knew I was screwed. This baby was coming whether I was ready or not.