Harper's Birth Story Part 1

February 11



We go in for our 38 week appointment. Like always, every appointment begins with the customary urine sample, weigh in and blood pressure check. At the weigh in I notice a few extra pounds on the scale. The physician assistant didn't say anything and neither did I. She takes my blood pressure and doesn't say a word. ( I now know my pressure was sky high at this point) Now the silence is getting on my nerves. She gets another technician to take my pressure. Which I'm totally ok with, because I didn't like her energy anyway! The new tech tells me to think of calming things. Bam, still high. She sends me into the exam room to lie down. After 20 minutes they come to take it again. It went down like 20 points. My midwife then tells me I'm not to go back to work and I'm on bed rest until baby comes. Not only that, they want me to come back on Monday. What? I don't have blood pressure issues! Sure my pressure has been rising over the past two weeks, but I just thought that meant my body was tired of being pregnant. Little do they know, I have a 4 day weekend, so sure, bed rest! I'd planned on going in to work on the 16th to settle things at work.





February 14th


Around 9 or 10 o'clock Johnny and I go to dinner, just a block from the house. We order, I go to the restroom. I come back, take a seat and GOOSH!! Ok, so what was that? I tell Johnny it’s time to go home. About midnight I start feeling this weird pressure in my lower belly. We called the midwife about 1:45. I describe my symptoms, including the contractions I was starting to feel. She says, “Get some sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow @ 3:30.” Okkkkk…But at 4:45 I woke up with the world’s worst contraction. It just would not stop! I tried to get some rest that day, but the contractions went from 15 minutes apart to 7 minutes apart. At our 3:30 appointment, it was determined that my water had actually broke the night before and was stained with muconium. We were told to go right to the hospital. At the hospital we were told we were no longer candidates for water birth, because Harper had gone #2 inside me. So of course I had a moment (tears), but we had to get ourselves together quickly to birth our baby.

Contractions were coming pretty regularly.  I was checked and surprisingly just at 1cm dilated.  With a little help, I slept that night.