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I’m writing this down, so I don’t forget later. Jessa’s memory of yesterday is hazy, but later she’ll also write down what she remembers.

Jessa had been experiencing some braxton-hicks contractions for a couple weeks. Her tummy would get hard for up to a minute, and then would soften. She couldn’t really feel that she was having a contraction unless she put her hand on her stomach. She had been feeling some mild cramps (like menstrual). She also got really puffy from excess fluid retention, that was sort of a pain.

On Tuesday this week, she had a mid-day doctor’s appointment, so she scheduled a day off teaching. On Monday night, as we were getting ready for bed, she noticed that she was having real regular, but painless contractions, about 6-8 minutes apart and they would last for a minute or so. That was exciting, because a criteria for labor is regular contractions.

She also started snoring this week. I slept on the couch a lot. Between her snores and the dog snoring, the cat and I could not get any sleep.

Anyways, on Tuesday I woke up earlier and waited until 8 am. I was pretty excited about the regular contractions from last night, so I presented her with a stop watch and told her to time the contractions. We knew that if you have contractions that 40 to 60 seconds, and are 3-5 minutes apart, and that happens for one hour, you should call the doctor. So we sat in bed and had fun counting the contractions. Her contractions met the criteria, but they were painless. We called the doctor and they said they would check her cervix when we came in for her scheduled doctor appointment.

We went in and they checked her out and said she was 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced. This was really good—most people go through a lot of pain and effort to get to that point and Jessa did it without much effort. The doctor said that the kid could come that evening, or it could be up to a week.

This was still two weeks before the due date, so it was a bit unexpected to be that much ahead of schedule.

So we were quite happy and went home and went for walks and cleaned the house and prepared for baby. Her contractions had stopped by this point.

The next morning, we woke up and experienced the same thing, regular painless contractions.

(this section needs to be cleaned up and re-written, just wanted to jot my thoughts down now because i need to go do other things soon)

• didn’t go to school wed
• went to school thurs
• waiting sucks
• anxious
• not many more contractions w-th
• fri morning, woke up at 3:30 with cramping and pain and contractions. went back to bed.
• woke up a few more times, same thing. decided nt to go to school today.
• she woke me up at 9 am and said “I think this is it!” I was skeptical, past two days had been pretty long and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
• having pain, had to breathe her way through the contractions. stopped talking during them.
• timed them, then called doctor. doctor said to wait until the contractions were so close together and so intense that jessa thought she wouldn’t be able to talk to the doctor on the phone.
• dropped dog off at parents house, contractions seemed to intensify
• made plans to go for walk
• got back home, time contractions for a bit on the couch, put off the walk a bit.
• water broke at 11 am, greenish brown
• called doctor, she said to come right in
• awesome!
• i loaded stuff up in the car, then began a very frustrating, slow drive to the hospital where i was stuck behind slow people and the stop lights hated me.
• jessa was working hard at this point, had to really focus on getting through each contractions.
• got to hospital, went straight into the delivery room. Just me and Jessa and hospital staff are in the delivery room during labor.
• nurse came in, got Jessa hooked up to a (empty) iv line (just in case). We went completely natural, meaning no painkillers.
• midwife came in, checked cervix. was 5 cm dilated and was paper thin. so we were definitely going to have a baby soon
• generally, cervix opens up 1 cm per hour. this means we have 5 hours left, and then another 1-2 hours of pushing.
• man, this is intense. jessa is seriously working. can’t talk much, her eyes were shut most of the time. i held her hand and coached her through each contraction. i’ve regained most of the feeling in my fingers now.
• 90 minutes go by. Jessa tries a couple different positions, sitting on a ball and rocking chair seemed to work best. i don’t know if she or i can do this for 3.5 more hours.
• there is no break during labor. there’s 30-45 seconds between contractions, and that’s barely enough time to catch your breath. you can’t stop and go ‘whew, time for a breather’.
• jessa doesn’t talk much, but lots of grimacing and a little moaning. again, this is intense stuff.
• 2.5 hours. Another cervix check. I leave the room to go give Jessa’s parents a quick update. I return to hear the midwife say cervix is completely dilated and we are in transitioning phase and ready to start pushing! This went twice as fast as typical, which was great!
• ok, pushing is twice as intense. Much more painful. She’s pushing hard, eyes tightly shut, breathing fast.

gotta go, will update later.