A portion of my diary from 11-29-90 —
9 days ago our son Christopher Owen was born. He weighed 7 lbs. 7 ozs. and is 20 1/2 inches long. He now weighs 7 lbs. 15 ozs. as of his 11/27 check-up. He’s beautiful!
Last Monday, my due date, I woke at 9:00 a.m. to the phone ringing. I ran to get it, and wasn’t sure if water was going to break (details omitted!). I went back to bed for 3 hours. When I got back up I called the doctor and they said if it stopped it probably was just incontinence, but to call if it did it again or if any pains started.
I got all the laundry together and went to Gayle’s and started washing all the clothes (we’d done all our shopping on Saturday). I had more what I wondered if it was incontinence doing laundry. I didn’t say anything for about half hour as I felt real shaky and nervous and unbelieving. Finally I told gayle then continued laundry while waiting for Roger to come in for dinner, and no pains had started yet. None of us had heard of the pains not coming right away so we thought maybe it was more incontinence.
After going home I waited a while longer (details omitted), then I called Kaiser and they said, come right in, sounds like you’re having a baby! So we finished packing our bag we’d started a few days before, I got a shower and an apple, and we were on our way. Roger stopped at Speedway for gas and we got on the freeway. I believe we left the house at 1 a.m. and I had my first “pain” at 1:15 a.m. somewhere around the Grand River exit. I wasn’t sure if it was a labor pain. It was different from the ones later. I had two about 10-20 minutes part then. We were so relieved, we were afraid they may try to induce labor if I hadn’t started yet. Inducing can increase the need for ceasarian or forceps delivery, and would have kept us from using the birthing room.
When they got me all set in the birthing room, they verified that my water was indeed broken, and that I was 70% effaced and dilated 1 cm.
to be continued
