Karlie Elisabeth - Part 1

Well after considering that the blog said Karlie still had 6 days until her arrival, and after the polite, not-so-subtle hinting (ahem, nagging) from my sisters, I figure it is time for a blog update.

Warning: The following post is not for the faint at heart. Words and phrases, such as urine, water breaking, amniotic fluid, cervix, etc. are included.
Things can and will get quite personal. Feel free to scroll past everything and just look at the pictures.

Our biggest news is that Karlie Elisabeth decided to come 3 weeks and 6 days early. She either couldn't wait to meet her mommy and daddy or she got sick and tired of hearing me complain about how unbelievably uncomfortable she was making me. Maybe I guilted her into coming. I absolutely adored months 1-7 of my pregnancy. I wasn't too crazy about month 8 and apparently month 9 was not for me because I never made it that far.

On Saturday, January 23, JP and I were down in Montgomery celebrating my dad's birthday with the fam and I truly believed I was at my pregnancy limit. My skin literally hurt from being stretched, my ankles were so swollen that when I'd push on them there would be a dent in my skin. Sleep was just a fond memory and I was tired of spending most of my "sleeping" hours in the bathroom instead of in bed. And not to be over-dramatic but I was starting to think NO woman had ever experienced the kind of back pain I had. I had looked up "How to Induce Labor" but hadn't tried any 1. because of lazines, 2. fear of it actually working and being 4 weeks early, and 3. all the sites said not to and I try to be respectfully obedient. The only thing I had done was eaten my fair share of pineapple, in an attempt to "soften my cervix".

Anyway, we left my parent's house that Saturday night to come back to Birmingham, got home at about 11 and were in bed at 11:30. 5 hours later (which was the longest stretch of sleep I had gotten in a LOOONG time...God really knows what He's doing cause He knew I'd need it) I woke up and my legs felt really wet. My first thought: "Great. It's 4:30 in the morning and I lose bladder control..." So I begin the semi-long process of heaving myself out of the bed and into the bathroom. Well, the SECOND I sat up in bed, I went from a little wet to soaked. I ran to the toilet and then it hit me. Waking up JP has never been an easy task, and actually getting him to "come to" proves to be pretty difficult too, but all it took this time was calling his name 4 or 5 times and saying "I think my water broke" and I have NEVER seen him out of bed and by my side so fast.

Trying to remember what we've learned about how to tell whether or not your water breaking, the first thing I remembered was to smell it. If it's urine, it'll smell like urine. If it's odorless, get ready to have a baby. Mine was odorless. JP came back to the bathroom with my phone and said to call the doctor. I called the after-hours line, told the nurse I thought my water just broke, and asked which doctor was on call (Dr. Campbell - when we found that out, we took it as one sign that I was going to have Karlie that night because after meeting Dr. Campbell, we prayed several times that if I did go into labor on my own, that she would be on call, and she was!) After I hung up with the nurse, we waited for Dr. C to call us back with instructions of what to do. She called right away and said to come on in, they would test to see if it was amniotic fluid and if it was, we'd go from there. I asked her if she thought we should pack a bag and she said yes, so there was something else that made me think "Today's the day!"

While we were getting ready to leave (JP was packing our bags and I was doing my hair) doubts really started to pour in. I hadn't had one single contraction yet, not even Braxton Hicks. At my appointment that week, I was dilated 1cm and my cervix was 50% effaced and I didn't think that was enough to really be going into labor yet. All I remember hearing was that women walk around for WEEKS being dilated 1cm, sometimes even more than that. I was sure that I was about to become one of those pregnant women who go to the hospital 10 times before they actually have their baby.

About 30 minutes later (5:00 AM), we were packed, the dogs were outside, I had my towel to sit on in the car, and we were on the way to the hospital!

to be continued... (until then, a picture of Karlie)