MAGnificient Maggie's Birth Story-Part I

Hi, this is Maryanne. I am the momma of our sweet, sweet daughter, Magnolia Raine. On Saturday morning at about 3am, I was woken up to what I thought might be a contraction. It was so minor but I was 3 days overdue so anything felt like something at this point. I was able to fall back asleep and thought nothing of it till the next one at 3:30am. Well, this was something. I was pretty excited but didn't want to get my hopes up too high as with my first baby I never went in to labor, 11 days past my due date. So back to sleep I went and AJ let me sleep in till about 8:30 when I woke up. He had been playing with Porter downstairs and I was able to get a little sleep.

Off started that Saturday as any other with some minor contractions happening ever so often. Nothing regular but at contractions none the less. We had breakfast, went to the pet store, put Porter down for a nap and my sister came over to help straighten up our house in case Maggie was coming since I had about 6 loads of folded laundry on the loveseat in our living room for the last two weeks! We picked up and I rested and AJ packed our bags.

Fast forward to about 4pm and I was having more contractions but the pain was tolerable and I was trying to keep moving so that my labor would keep going. So off to church we went. By the time we got home my contractions seemed to be a bit more regular. We just keep tracking and moving right along. By 11pm that night contractions seemed to be pretty regular and progression was happening, we thought. My sister had decided to stay the night with us so if we headed to the hospital she could come with us and Jana would on call to come over and stay at our house and wake up in the morning with Porter. Around 2:30am my contractions were fairly intense about 5 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. This is what we thought was progression. We packed the car and climbed in for the ride out to Silverton after calling our midwife and letting her know we were headed in. She said she would let the hospital know we were on our way. Off we whisked in to the cold night headed to the hospital to have a baby just like we imagined.

Once we arrived, I was placed in a triage room and began the process of assessing my labor and determining if I was to be admitted or not. I was convinced by every means in my body I needed to be admitted as I hurt. I was not having back labor pains, but I was getting close to having more pain than I felt was tolerable. The nurse did a cervical check at that point and I was a wonderful "dimple" of a ONE! Now, not everyone understands this but basically you need to be 10cm to birth a baby and I was barely a 1. What? No way. She measured wrong. With as much pain as I was in and as much as I had already labored there was no way all that was for barely a 1. The doctor came in and confirmed this and basically said I wasn't ready to be admitted as I was not really in active labor. True, but I was in pain. How was I to go home to my house in this much pain with a 21 month old running around wanting me to play blocks with him? This is when the fun begins...

I can't blog all the birth story in one post as it would be an eternal post since my labor ends up being about 36 hours, so I am going to break it in to different sections. This is just the beginning.

Also, as a slight disclaimer. Since I was in so much pain and so much was happening in different facets of this, I might not know the whole truth or what was happening. I know lots of people are reading this and I really don't want to offend anyone who was involved in this whole process in any way. The labor and delivery team at Silverton was AMAZING! The PANDA team who transported our daughter to OHSU was AMAZING and the nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors at Dornbecker's have all been AMAZING as well. This is my view on the the birth of Maggie through my tired mind and eyes after having given birth three days ago and my world being turned upside down. :)