So, baby Mark is here. But guess what: get­ting the baby out is harder than get­ting it in.

Many women love to share ter­ri­ble labour ad birth sto­ries. I’m sorry, mine will be PG-rated: it was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence and it wasn’t that bad. Lucky me?

Like I explained, I didn’t enjoy being preg­nant and I was cer­tainly not glow­ing. I was look­ing for­ward for the grand finale. Sure, I was a bit anx­ious about it, but he per­spec­tive of going through labour didn’t bother me much. I fig­ured bil­lions of women had done so before me and that it was a nat­ural process. Besides, as much as I dis­like hos­pi­tals, I’m not a very mod­est per­son and I don’t get grossed out by body stuff easily—blood, secre­tions don’t bother me.

I didn’t attend any pre-natal classes and I didn’t read much about birth and labour. My birth plan was sim­ple: I had told my ob-gyn I had no set prin­ci­ples, that I trusted the med­ical team and that I wanted to go with the flow. The only thing I asked was for Feng to be with me and that he’d be the one announc­ing the gen­der. I wanted nat­ural child­birth, i.e. no epidural. Again, it wasn’t a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple and I hadn’t done much research about the pros and cons—I just wanted to keep things nat­ural and straight­for­ward, if pos­si­ble. Besides, I rarely take any med­ica­tion, and I’m high if I have a Tylenol!

The Onset of Labour

My due date was approach­ing: I was 37–38 weeks preg­nant (38 weeks accord­ing to the doc­tors, I still think I was 37!). I started to look out for the early signs: the baby drop­ping, increase Brax­ton Hicks con­trac­tions, and of course the break­age of the amni­otic sac and the mucus plug.

On Octo­ber 11, I had my weekly appoint­ment at the hos­pi­tal. I had been feel­ing tired and uncom­fort­able but no more than usual. Actu­ally, I had just decided to put my yoga classes on hold! I walked back the 2.5 kilo­me­tres from the hos­pi­tal to home that evening, so obvi­ously I was still fine.

It was Feng’s birth­day but we post­poned eat­ing out to the week­end since I came back late from the hopistal, where I was the last patient of the day.

Around 11 p.m., I started feel­ing pain in my lower back and cramps in my legs. It had hap­pened before and I thought I had walked too much.

I went to bed but couldn’t sleep: the lower back pain wouldn’t go away. I stared at the dig­i­tal clock in the bed­room and at one point real­ized that the gap between the sharp shots of pain was regular—the inter­val was about seven minutes.

At 2:30 a.m., I woke Feng up. “Alright, this may be noth­ing but I’m really in pain… and it may be real contractions.”

I had heard about false labour and I was still expect­ing my water to break as a sure sig­nal of labour, so I was pretty calm. We are only a ten-minute drive from the hos­pi­tal and babies don’t drop like that.

The pain was bad for a minute, and then for five min­utes I would be just fine, until it starts again. It was weird: dur­ing the con­trac­tions, part of me just wanted them to go away, but dur­ing each few-minute respite, I kept on hop­ing it was actu­ally labour, and I was look­ing for­ward for the next con­trac­tion to con­firm my instinct.

At 3:30 a.m. I called the hospital’s triage hot­line. The woman on the phone was very calm and help­ful, and sug­gested I’d take a bath and relax. “If it’s labour, it will take a while,” she said, “so you can stay home for now, as long as you are okay with that.”

It seemed like a plan. Feng and I read the news and tried to keep our­selves busy, not talk­ing much. It was just weird. It was the mid­dle of the night and we were on the com­puter, read­ing the news and answer­ing work emails.

“Okay, maybe you should pack a bag,” Feng even­tu­ally offered.

I didn’t have my hos­pi­tal bag ready—I’m usu­ally pretty orga­nized but for some rea­son I found it was bad luck to pack ahead of time. I did have a list ready though, so I threw some toi­letry, a change of clothes for me and the baby, my Kin­dle and the usual con­tent of my hand­bag (Black­Berry, IDs, etc.) into a big­ger bag. What else would I need?

Just before 6 a.m., I told Feng it was time to go to the hos­pi­tal. I was per­fectly fine between each con­trac­tion but they were get­ting stronger and stronger, and I was lit­er­ally down on my knee each time they came. Besides, I couldn’t feel the baby mov­ing as much, and it scared me a bit.

The Last Few Preg­nant Pic­tures, 36 Weeks at Rideau Hall

The Last Few Preg­nant Pic­tures, 36 Weeks at Rideau Hall

Related arti­cles:

1. My Non-Scary Non-Gory Labour and Birth Story – Part III
2. My Non-Scary Non-Gory Labour and Birth Story – Part II
3. The World: Meet Mark, Born 12÷10÷12!
4. Call­ing a Spade a Spade—When It’s Not the Time to be Modest
5. One Dragon Baby to Rule Them All—A Month Later, in Numbers
6. 10 Things That Feel Great When You Are No Longer Pregnant