Our last obgyn appointment, I was at 40 weeks. The doctor, surprised that I was still pregnant, decided to do another sweep of my cervix, scraping the membranes in hopes that it would help move things along. But since everything was otherwise at a stand still, the doctor scheduled for us to be induced on the 22nd.
Once again the results of the sweep slowly came up over the course of a few days. First there was spotting, then an increase in discharge that ramped up more each day. I won't go into detail about the discharge. All I will say was there was a lot and it was gross.
But in spite of the promising results that came from the sweep, it still didn't seem like enough. I had little to no contractions (except for when I was walking) and there were no signs of my water breaking. In my desperation to get things moving, I continued to walk miles each day, and doing just about everything I could think of to get the baby to drop into position.
On July 18th at 3am, I got up to use the bathroom. It was funny really. I almost wasn't sure what happened at first. I had just finished going pee, wiped, and as I was about to stand up, I felt a small gush of water come out. I sat there for a second, my heart racing, trying to figure out what just happened. Did my water just break or did I just have more in my bladder than I thought?...It didn't feel like I was peeing, but everything is so squished down there with my big belly, who can really say?....
I tried to walk around to see if I would continue to leak fluid. There was a little tiny bit of runny fluid but honestly, it wasn't like the big Hollywood splash-down. I began to think it may have all been in my head. So I tried to go back to sleep. But of course, I couldn't. When 4am came rolling around, I still felt like I had a little more watery fluid leaking out, though still nothing of great significance, so I decided to wake my husband up. Maybe I was going to be the crazy woman who went to the hospital over a small trickle of pee, but I wanted to be absolutely sure. So, as planned, we went down the checklist on the back of the front door, gathered up our things, and headed out for the hospital.
At 4:30am we were checked in and waited anxiously as the nurse ran a test on my urine to determine if it contained traces of amniotic fluid or not. As I went back to the bathroom to give them a sample, I noticed a second gush of fluid, much like the first, but this time there were small bits of blood and what looked like small shreds of tissue paper in my sample. I had read about this before. The small bits of tissue is actually parts of the fluid sack. At that point, I was positive my water had broken. And sure enough, about 20 minutes later, the nurse returned with a smile on her face. "Guess what day it is?" she said with glee. "It's your son's birthday!"
With that, we were checked in to the labor and delivery room, calling up our family and friends, anxiously waiting for Andy to arrive. It was hard to believe. One second I had been power walking around the neighborhood trying to get things moving and the next, I was sitting in the hospital room watching the sun rise over the city, trying to wrap my head around the idea that, come nightfall, we would be holding our little boy in our arms.
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