Retro Post - Abby's Practice Run

Friday, March 9, 2007 – Abby pretended she wanted to be born five weeks early. I woke up in the middle of the night in serious pain. I was actually relieved that the contractions were super strong so I was sure I was in labor. I had been a little afraid that I wouldn’t know when I was in labor with her since all three of my labors had been so different. This was definitely labor. I wasn’t really cool with delivering five weeks early and I was worried about how intense the pain was. Both Emily and Elise were born within two hours of my first painful contraction. I had a lot of fear of giving birth in the car. My mom did that and, while it is a funny family story now, I certainly didn’t want to repeat it.

I waited through a few contractions and then called my mom to come and stay with the kids. She and Holly set out and Nate and I timed contractions. By the time they got here, the contractions were lots less painful but still coming every 4 or 5 minutes. I figured since I had already woken up the whole family, I might as well go to the hospital. I was relieved when they confirmed that I really was in labor. I was even more relieved when it stopped. My contractions came regularly for a few hours, but things weren’t really progressing. Basically, Nate and I paid 500 bucks to watch a movie and play scrabble on his phone in the hospital’s triage room.



I felt like a bit of an idiot getting sent home from the hospital. You would think that with my fourth baby I would be more of an expert about the whole labor thing. Since I was only 35 weeks along, I earned myself a week of bed rest. It was kind of pseudo bed rest since I had three kids to take care of and Nate couldn’t take off work. I managed to be lazy enough and the kids survived with lots of movie watching and no-prep food. We were happy that Abby stayed put until she was good and ready. Three weeks later when nothing had changed, we began to wonder if she was ever going to come.