(Written on September 10th, 2022)

I was supposed to be checking into the hospital today around 4 pm to start my planned 10 week stay. Everything was looking so good (minus the leaking amniotic fluid). The baby was moving and kicking, and on Monday, September 5th, it was actually measuring a day ahead. So we weren’t having problems with growth. We still didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. Because of the lack of fluid, the ultrasounds were getting more and more difficult to see. The baby was always curled up so there was no way to tell.

This whole experience, from start to finish, we’ve always felt like things would work out how they were supposed to, so even though so many things were going wrong, it all felt okay. Starting about a month ago though, one thought kept popping into my head that I thought was just my usual way of “hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst” but now I think it was God’s way of preparing me for what was to come. That thought was, “Things will turn out how they’re supposed to, but your version and God’s version of what’s supposed to happen might be two completely different things, and it doesn’t mean things will turn out well.” I still felt like everything would turn out positive though.

I had made a list of all the things I wanted to take to the hospital with me, and had gotten some craft stuff together to do when I would be bored out of my mind (knitting, embroidery stuff, clay, etc), but hadn’t officially packed anything. For some reason, I kept feeling like it wasn’t really a big deal to prepare for it. I was planning on deep cleaning the house on Thursday when Matt was at work and then packing everything on Friday. He works at a Fire Station now (he literally just started and this would have been his 2nd shift), and he does 48 hour shifts. So he would be gone from 8am Thursday to 8am Saturday. I kept thinking I should go stay at my moms just in case something happened, but I didn’t want to spend my last 2 days out of the hospital there. I wanted to be home, but I kept getting a weird feeling that something was going to happen.

Wednesday night (September 7th), around 10 pm, I started feeling like I was having gas or constipation really bad but nothing was happening. I just kept going into the bathroom because I felt like if I could use it, it would make me feel better. I started noticing that my pain would come and go rather than stick around, which happens sometimes when I would get my really bad stomach aches, so I didn’t really consider that they could be contractions. Especially because I started timing them and sometimes I would go 3 minutes without pain, and other times 15 minutes. I was under the impression that contractions would happen at regular intervals and get closer and closer together. Matt kept asking if we needed to go to the hospital and I kept coming up with excuses because I didn’t think they were contractions. Now I know I was just in denial and scared that they could be.

Around 10:30 the pain had gotten so much worse that I started getting worried. Even though I knew exactly what they would tell me (which is that they couldn’t really tell me anything), I called labor and delivery and said that I felt like it was just gas, but I wasn’t sure, but didn’t want to come in if they would just send me home. They said what I thought they’d say and told me it was up to me if I felt like I needed to go in. I remember really not wanting to, so I said a prayer and just asked that if I needed to go to the hospital to please let me bleed, because for some reason, in my brain, that was what would indicate that it was really labor and not something else. The next time I went into the bathroom, there was blood. I walked straight out, told Matt, “We need to go. I’m bleeding. I think I’m really in labor.” So we got dressed, he grabbed a phone charger, and we headed in. I felt numb and disconnected. It didn’t seem like it was actually happening to me. I tracked my contractions the whole way to the hospital just to keep my mind busy. The pain was getting really bad but I think I was still in partial denial about all of it. It wasn’t supposed to be happening yet.