Is it Labor or is it Gas? (or Is it the battery or are we out of Gas?) or Labor Story Part 1

I can't believe the babies are now 5 weeks old and I haven't blogged one little bit!

Now that we are finding our stride, I'm happy to begin sharing some details about the last month.

Let's go back to the week before they arrived...

I'd been having contractions since my 30th week and was on partial bed rest. However, at my 36th week my doctor encouraged me to start moving and walking in hopes that labor would begin. She was fairly convinced (as was I) that the girls would arrive any day. I had lots of pre-labor signs. We got our bags mostly packed and basically got into the frame of mind that we could have to go to the hospital at any time. We started counting contractions in the middle of the night. I even downloaded an app on my iphone for it!

I was disappointed when nothing happened. It started to feel like a torture of waiting. I remember one night just laying in my bed crying out of frustration. We'd been waiting for almost 2 weeks. I was ready for my season of preparation to be over and for my "easter" to arrive.

Well, the Easter holiday did arrive and was filled with contractions. My doctor requested wanted to do a "labor check". I was really hoping that it would be time...

We went to the hospital.

I took my bag just in case.

The monitors showed contractions every 3 minutes (although not painful ones) and healthy baby heartbeats. Since the contractions were not causing dialation, the doctors decided that I was not in labor, but that I should schedule a c-section for Thursday April 28th, which was our 38th week of gestation.

The doctors had a conversation that went something like this,

"I don't think she's in labor."

"I don't either..."

"But have you seen her belly!?"

I think they would have given me a c-section right then and there if I had insisted. But I didn't.

So we scheduled the appointment for 7am and went home to manage our way through our last 3 days as a twosome.

Those three days were surreal. It was as if everything was moving in slow motion. Those three days were also crazy. We got our bags packed (for real this time) and tried to spend some time doing things we enjoyed. We also had a little bit of drama...

That Tuesday on our way to my final doctor appointment, our family car (and only car) literally quit in the middle of the road...! It didn't need a jump... It wasn't out of gas...it was just completely dead.

You'd be surprised how few people stop to help when there's a ginormous pregnant woman standing on the side of the road. Finally, a friendly stranger came along. She actually took me to my appointment, which was so great. The best part was when Matt came to pick me up from the doctor...IN A TOW TRUCK. That was hilarious.

Can you imagine this woman riding in a tow truck? It was very bumpy. Very.

We spent the next few days having lots of conversations with our mechanics and eventually decided to bid farewell to our car. So here we were about to have two babies and no way to get to the hospital! Of course it all worked out and we borrowed and shared our way to our appointment that day. It made me think of this quote,

"Some people believe that when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."

— Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)

Is it true? Maybe. We were certainly distracted by those events and it did make the waiting go a little faster. And some very big and lovely things were trying to get themselves born. So maybe it is true.

Or maybe we just had a very old car.

Stay tuned for part 2...