As many of you who have been watching my Facebook wall have noticed, I was in labor on Sunday… but still don’t have baby in my arms.  I know a lot of you have asked for an update, so I thought I’d quickly do that here.

Sunday morning I woke up at 3am with steady contractions (every 2-4 minutes) that continued well into 5am when they began strengthening in intensity.  I called my midwife at that point and she came about an hour later to check on me and see if the contractions were true labor.  By that point, the contractions had become much stronger in intensity, so much that I would lose my train of thought in the middle of them (I’m pretty chatty, normally).  She checked my cervix and I was dilated to 3 cm but my cervix was still very thick and somewhat high (3 days prior she had checked my cervix and I was barely dilated to 1 cm).

So, we ate breakfast and then she took me on a walk, helping me stretch and work with the contractions.  After an hour of that, she checked my cervix again and I was dilated still only dilated to 3 cm, but my cervix had thinned to 85% effacement and gotten considerably lower.  Things were really moving along.

Then she broke me the news that one of her other preggo moms’ water had broken prior to my labor starting, but that mom still wasn’t having any contractions so she needed to go and check on that mom and see how she could help labor move along.  She sent one of her midwife attendants and my doula, Melissa, to stay with me and continue helping my labor progress.

A few hours later (after more walking, stretching and injuring my foot in the process), they checked my cervix again and I was dilated to 4 cm and baby’s head was right there (previously the bag of waters had been all they could feel near my cervix).  At this point, though, I was getting pretty tired from all the laboring.  They called my midwife to tell her my progress and sent me to bed to rest up so that I could have the strength for the rest of labor.  A lot of my family had been in and out by this point, too, and everyone went home since they were concerned that the crowd was also exhausting me and slowing my labor progression.

After waking, eating and walking & stretching some more (it seemed like walking was the very best thing to keep my labor moving steadily), my midwife was back to check on me.  She found that my cervix was now at 4.5 cm, but nothing else had really changed.  Even though I had napped, I was still quite tired (emotionally and physically) so she recommended for me to have some time with my kids and then rest some more.  My midwife left after this, leaving Melissa and Kelly (who had come during early afternoon) with me.

I read and snuggled with my kiddos for a bit and then Randy put them to bed.  Melissa and Kelly told me that at this point it appeared that my labor was no longer progressing.  My contractions had slowed considerably and I definitely wasn’t in active labor, by any means.  Bottom line: my labor had stopped.  Since my water hadn’t broken, it just meant that baby wasn’t quite ready to come and so I was supposed to just get back to “normal” life and wait for labor to start up again.

Since I’ve been struggling with pre-term labor for the past few months, doing my very best to keep baby in, the news that labor had stopped and I needed to wait longer was incredibly disheartening.  Broken-hearted I went to bed bawling my eyes out and woke up the next morning so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed until 11:30am.  I’ve felt like I’ve got post-partum depression as my emotions and hormones are crazy, wack0.  I’m still contracting quite a bit and feel as if I’ve been laboring (not only for the past few months), but for the past 4 days.

This all feels like I’m stranded on “Limbo Island,” the place of waiting and wondering.  Life is totally on hold until baby comes.  I’m fully at the mercy of this pregnancy every day.  In this state I’m unable to work and fully function as normal, which is terribly frustrating.  For someone who loves to be really active (& has to be, largely due to being the mother of 3 small children), being forced to just wait and be patient isn’t an encouraging thing.  If I felt fantastic, this would all be a different story.  Since I don’t, well… it’s tough.

I realize on the scale of how bad things could be that this is really not that bad. Baby is still thriving and will still be coming out (hopefully sooner rather than later).  I know there are soooo many lovely women who would give anything to trade me places, especially those who struggle with infertility.  Logically it doesn’t make sense to be so upset by the labor stopping, but the only thing I can say is that for me, this has been incredibly difficult.  I know labor will start again… someday…. and we’ll get to hold our sweet baby in our arms (and I’ll finally be done with feeling so miserably pregnant).  It really will happen, but until then, I’m doing my best to hold myself together.

Thank you SO much for all of your love and concern.  It has been such a strength to know that our sweet family, friends and loved ones everywhere are thinking of us at this time.  Your prayers are definitely being answered in our behalf as we have had strength beyond our own at this time.  Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

Will let you all know when baby makes their grand appearance!!!

p.s. Aren’t these photos gorgeous?!  I won a session at FotoFly and these were taken last Friday evening.  These photos have brought me so much joy over the past few days.  They really do celebrate and capture all the love and joy or family has for each other and our baby’s arrival.  Thank you, FotoFly!!!

Tagged as: midwife, motherhood, pregnancy, toddlers