July 18th at 10:30pm, my water broke. I was sitting on the porch and actually heard and felt and "pop" in my lower belly. Since my first labour lasted 84 hrs and my second labour lasted 24 hrs, I wanted sleep. So without saying anything, I convinced Lee we should go to bed.
Around 1:30am, July 19th, I woke up to contractions. Nothing serious, 10-15 minutes apart and very mild. Annoying enough though, that I couldn't sleep. Came downstairs to do some reading. Around 4am my contractions were still very mild but slightly stronger and around 10 minutes apart. I took a bath (which btw, didn't seem to affect my labour at all, no change in pain or relaxation, so obviously a water birth is not the way to go for me.
Continued relaxing on the porch reading my book. Since they were still quite mild, I figured I'd wait til at least 6am to wake everyone that way all could get a good night's sleep.
Around 7am I actually had to start stopping what I was doing to breathe through contractions... time to wake everyone up. Went to wake up Lee and told him the baby was coming. I went to wake up Brianna and got hit by my first hard contraction. I actually had to sit down for that one! Brianna was great, getting up with no argument and packing an overnight bag to go to Auntie Lisa's.
Suddenly my contractions were 5 minutes apart and I had to lean on something to breathe hard through them. Lee called mom to drive us to Ottawa. She showed up at 8:30am and we left. All of a sudden it felt like the baby was bearing down and I felt the need to cross my legs tight during contractions so she didn't pop right out! The pain in my back was so intense, I knew right away, back labour again (same as Brianna). For that matter, my back hurt more than my belly during contractions!
As we were hitting the edge of town I couldn't take it any more. I told my mom we weren't going to make it to Ottawa, to pull over and call for help. My mom immediately picked up the phone to dial 911. We pulled into the truck stop on the way out of town at 8:41am. My mom told Lee that the 911 dispatcher wanted him to check if I was crowning (thankfully maternity shorts are easy to pull off even sitting in the car!), nope, nothing yet.
After what seemed like an eternity, the ambulance showed up. We had to wait through a few contractions until I felt ok enough to get out of the car, onto the stretcher. Lee and I went into the ambulance and my mom went to drive Brianna back to my house to be watched by the neighbour, then come back to the hospital.
I remember the ambulance guy trying to take off my watch. He couldn't figure it out. Thankfully I am never without my watch so took it off for him even through a contraction with my eyes closed. He said he needed to insert an IV in case they needed to do a C-section. I laughed at myself then, knowing the baby didn't need one, she was on her way out with every passing second!
We got to the hospital at 8:54am. A nurse in the ER came up and I remember her taking half a second to lift the gurney sheet to check for crowning and all of a sudden there was yelling and we were being rushed upstairs.
After what seemed like an hour, I was settled into a bed in the delivery room and the nurse asked if I wanted to push. I told her "for quite some time now!". She said I could go ahead but I insisted on having my legs held, they put up the leg stirrups. Even in my pain induced fog, I knew that wasn't enough. Sure enough, one push, baby crowned and I almost kicked the nurse in the head! This time, a nurse grabbed the leg Lee wasn't holding. Pushed again, Olivia Christiane was here at 9:01am!
My mom showed up about 5 minutes later, even beating the dr by 10 minutes! She
was disappointed to miss the birth as she had been there for the others, but Olivia was in too much of a hurry! Olivia weighed in at 6lbs 7.5oz and was 18.5in long.
Lee later told me that she was born face down. I told him that was normal but very strange since I thought I had back labour (in which the baby would have been face up). I guess my back is just that messed up, that even with a normal labour and delivery, I'm gonna feel like my back is being ripped off. Let's hope I don't have actually back labour next time!!!
The water was COLD but after a few rides you got used to it fairly quickly. I'm not a big rides person (read: a big chicken lol) so I mostly hung out with Olivia. Brianna loved it. She had a great time and could go on most ride by herself if the adults wanted a break. Her favorite ride seemed to be the racing slide where up to 4 people could go down at the same time. Lee won most often cause of course he's the heaviest, but mom and Brianna won a couple too.
We managed to get Olivia to nap in her stroller, a big job in itself! She only slept for about 30 mins, but after she woke up I brought her on a kiddie slide. She seemed to like the slide, but the water was so cold I didn't bring her up again. She didn't mind lol Since the park was so un-busy, we let her run around a lot with us chasing her. She thought it was great! She loved the little sun chairs they had set up all over the place which were low so she could get in and out of them herself.
