On Friday, September the 18th Jay and I were lying in bed watching television – specifically, the ten o'clock news. I had a fairly bad backache and I asked him to rub my back, which he did. I didn’t think much of the backache since I have an old back injury from 1991 that got worse during pregnancy. I'm not sure when exactly after that that I started having mild contractions, but I didn't really think much of them. I don’t think I even realized that they were contractions.

The contractions kept me up a good part of the night, but only as the morning drew closer did they have any regularity to them – about seven minutes apart. At about six a.m. I drew a tub, something I had been thinking about doing since about three a.m., to see if that would make me feel better. Jay got up at about the same time I was taking a bath and I told him about the pains, which weren’t overly severe or following any pattern. They were just bothersome. Too, I had been taking red raspberry combination and I was only five days away from my due date.

After sitting in the tub for forty-five minutes or so I got out and went to lay back down. I fell asleep for a little while, sort of dozing off and on as I had most of the night. I was paying some attention to my clock, but not much, though it probably wasn’t of too much use as it doesn’t have a second hand.

Jay came back to bed and laid down with me. We didn't get up again until about ten a.m. By that point the contractions were following a ten minute apart or greater time schedule. They were less bothersome than they were earlier, which just served to further convince me that this couldn't be the real thing. I mean, contractions that lessen in severity and grow further apart? No way could that be real. That had to be Braxton-Hicks related to the red raspberry and the closeness of my due date. I figured my body was going through exercises getting itself ready for the big day.

Jay got up about ten, took a shower and left to do some errands at about eleven a.m. Shortly after he left, I got in the shower and took my normal morning shower. Partway through I heard the phone ring and figured it was Jay – which it was as I later found out. When I got out of the shower, I picked up the phone which was ringing again and it was Jay wondering where I'd been. He was a tad concerned since he knew that I hadn't been feeling well all day. Matter of fact, I had said to him earlier in the day that I wasn't going to go work at Red Cross as I had planned to since I wasn't feeling well. They'd have to lump stuff not getting done.

Around half past twelve or one p.m. Jay got back from his errands. He talked to our friend Stan on the phone around one-thirty p.m. and told him I was having some false labor cramps. That was pretty true for up until that point, and even a little bit thereafter, the contractions had no rhyme or reason to them. They went from sort of off and on through the night to about seven minutes apart in the early morning to ten minutes or greater apart with lessening intensity towards midday. It was only after one-thirty p.m. or so that they really began to show their colors, so to speak. They began to get closer together and more intense, but at this point I was tired of clock watching. I mean, it hadn't done me any good up until now, so why bother?

Between that time and about three p.m. the contractions really became a bear. I had been walking around the house with the sheet my midwife had given me outlining true vs false labor, seeing if and where I fit in the descriptions. I don't know that it ever seemed to me that I fit any of the "real" labor descriptions. At about three p.m. the pain was becoming rather unbearable and Jay took my sheet from me saying he was going to call Claudia (my midwife).

At this point, I was bleeding a fair amount, which really worried me. I had heard that you were supposed to have some blood tinged mucus – like your mucus plug – but I had never heard about bright red blood in large quantities.

So Jay called the number on the sheet I had been walking around with and put me on the phone with the answering service. I told them how I was feeling, which was getting worse by the minute, and the lady I was speaking with said, "Sounds like you're in labor young lady." Yeah right, I said to myself, prove it! She told me that she'd call Claudia – who was on call, yeah! – and that Claudia would call me back. Claudia called at about half past three and we talked on the phone for a little while.

However, the pain was so intense at one point that I went into the bathroom, leaving the phone with Jay. I think by this point I was screaming because it hurt so much. Plus this blood business was freaking me out. Apparently, Claudia felt that this was the real thing because I heard Jay saying that he'd bring me up to the hospital, which was only a few blocks down the street. He asked me to get dressed and we started throwing things together. I had a bag packed, but it was all the extras that we wanted to take with us, the video camera, video tapes, slippers, etc. At one point before leaving I leaned against the front door and said that I had had all intentions of trying to do this without meds but that I was really beginning to think that some drugs might be nice.

We got up to the ER at about four p.m. and they took me upstairs to the OB ward. I was in the delivery room by about ten past four. The nurse wanted to put me in the bed, which I started to do but a contraction hit me and so I grabbed ahold of her instead. Jay came in at this point and I asked him to draw me a bath. They finally got me up in the bed – protesting because I didn’t want to be there – and by then Claudia was there.

Claudia checked me, saw that I was fully dilated and told Jay not to worry about the bath. I had again said to Jay, and the transportation person, on the way up that I didn't want to have drugs, but maybe I would consider it after all. Jay just chuckled at that. Of course, when they finally looked and saw that I was fully dilated, it was too late for that consideration!

They lowered the foot of the bed some and put up a squat bar so that I could pull myself up on it to push. Jay says I had about six contractions (of three pushes each) and she was starting to be born. At about fifteen contractions or so she came into the world – less than forty-five minutes after I had gotten there. Little Robyn Avril, all seven beautiful pounds of her.

Jay started calling people once the cleanup process was done. One of the first people Jay called was our pastor Don Ward. He got Don’s wife Caron who said that she'd call some folks and let them know the news. About fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door of my delivery room and in walked Andrea Nelson, a good friend from church. She and I had originally planned to try to go to Potomac Mills (an outlet mall about two hours away) that day. Guess it's a good thing that didn't work out, eh? :-)