I woke up on October 6 wondering if today would be the day, like I had every day for the past three weeks. It was Sunday. We needed to go to the store, so I put on whatever clothes would still fit my huge belly. We went to a Kroger that we don’t normally go to, and I remember that I broke the eggs on my hand and couldn’t find a bathroom to wash my hands in. That bothered me. The fish guy kept talking to my husband, and that bothered me because I was overdue and my feet hurt. We managed to get everything we needed, even though we made a few trips back and forth across the store.

We finally found the bathroom, and as I washed my hands, I noticed that my nose looked swollen, something my chiropractor said would happen close to labor beginning. My husband couldn’t see it, he thought I was grasping at straws, and maybe I was, but I swore my nose was swollen. I was very excited. We left Kroger and stopped at Target for something, probably so I could have one last Target trip without a baby. Little did we know how right we were.

When we got home, I put away the groceries, and I had this urge to make sure I had plenty of clean underwear. I could not rest until I rounded up every last pair and washed them. My husband thought I was crazy, but I can’t explain it. It needed to be done. He went for a bike ride at the park. He was worried about leaving me, but I made him go because the hovering was annoying me and the weather was nice. So he left, and I took a nap. It was a glorious nap. I’m so glad I slept. He got home, showered, and we started cooking dinner. I decided that I needed crinkle fries, he decided he needed a pop, so I sent him back to Kroger (a different one) while I prepped the veggies to be roasted. While he was gone, I had a cramp. I paused. It felt like a period cramp, which is what alerted me that this would be different. It didn’t last long, but I got out my contraction timer just in case. Eight minutes later, I had another cramp. He came home, and we continued to cook, with me pausing every 8-14 minutes. I didn’t tell him what was going on yet. I wanted to wait until I was contracting for an hour. While I tried to eat my food on the couch, I had another contraction, and I had to let him know. “T, I think I’m in labor. I’ve been having contractions for an hour.” He was very calm on the outside, downloaded a better contraction timer, and told me to tell him when they started and stopped so he could keep track.

I always knew I’d go into labor at night.

My contractions continued to come, and I decided to try every single thing and every position we went over in our birth class. I quickly learned that I couldn’t stand to be crunched up since the contractions were mainly in my lower uterus. Sitting was out of the question. All fours was terrible. The only thing that was manageable was walking and yelling. I walked miles around our bed and down our hallway that night. After every contraction, I was on the toilet because I felt like I had to poo, and my birth teacher told us to keep our bladders as empty as possible. My poor animals were so frightened. Bea, my dog, just wanted to be on top of me. The cats hid and hissed at me. I jumped in the shower, and my contractions came faster but were a lot shorter in the shower, so I got out. I didn’t want to go through this and have it stop.

At 11:00, I called the on-call midwife, who was not my favorite midwife. She told me to change it up (I had been), get in the shower and see if things changed (done), and come in to the hospital when I felt like it. I was frustrated and cried when I got off the phone because she hadn’t listened to me. I had been doing all of that. So we kept on. For an hour, I laid on the bed because I was tired, only getting up to walk the halls. I turned off all the lights and dozed between contractions. I spent a few lying on my side stretched out as much as possible. My husband told me later that he kept hoping that this wasn’t it because he was so tired and all he wanted was to sleep.

Around 3:30, I decided to try sitting in the water. We filled the bathtub up and I got in, but the drain was faulty. The water kept going down. It wasn’t a good time for me. I couldn’t get my belly in the water at all, and my husband had to step out every time I yelled because of the echo. I can’t remember how long I was in there, but my contractions were still irregular. Finally, at 4:00, I said we had to go to the hospital. I had to know where I was at. He walked around getting things ready, walked the dog, and I sat on the toilet, wondering if I was making a mistake. It was 14 minutes between contractions that time, and I had one on the toilet. It was horrible. I asked him if he could hear me yelling outside, and he said it wasn’t too loud.

I had a contraction on the way to the car. I tried to be quiet, because it was 4:30 in the morning. We were on our way. The drive was the worst. We got stopped at every red light. I had a contraction on the on ramp to I-64, and when it was over, I told my husband that we were just going to have to find another way to get to the hospital if we got sent home because I wasn’t going through that again. I had another contraction in the tunnel, and then another going over the Kennedy Bridge. The lane we needed to be in was of course the most pothole filled lane, and we hit every single one of them.

We got to the hospital, and I had another contraction in the middle of the parking lot. I didn’t care about being loud then. They could deal, and it wasn’t a residential neighborhood. We went in, and I asked how to get to L&D. At this time, I started to get really emotional. But then I got pissed when I found out that my information wasn’t in the computer and I had to register (even though I had pre-registered). Talk about angry. They asked the normal questions (that were asinine in my opinion at that point) while I had contractions. Finally, someone came with the wheelchair and took me up to L&D. It was 5:00 in the morning.

I got to my room, and got undressed. At that point I realized that my plug was gone and I had bloody show (yes!). My nurse checked me and said, “You’re 5-6 cm. Welcome to Labor and Delivery!” I was so proud. My husband congratulated me. They put the monitors on me and apologized for keeping me on my back. I started to have more intense contractions, and she checked me again ten minutes later and told me that I was 7 cm. At that point, she told the midwife that she needed to stay and the inserted my IV since I was a bit dehydrated.

It got fuzzy. I stayed on my back for hours. I was so tired. They kept asking me if I wanted to change positions, and I refused. They put the squat bar up for me to push on. My nurses were great at helping me channel my energy into opening up down there. I lost all sense of time. The shift changed, and I was so glad to see my favorite midwife. I got a new nurse, Ashley, and she stayed with me the entire time, holding my hand and telling me to stop apologizing when I cursed at her and my husband. At some point, I flipped over on all fours. It felt like a ninja move. I asked if it was too late for the epi, but Ashley told me that I didn’t need it, that I was so close. I got really hot, and more people started coming into the room. I was aware of the sun rising as I pushed. I felt when my water broke. My husband kept telling me what a good job I was doing. They said they could see her head; did I want to have a mirror? I said no. I couldn’t feel my legs. My chosen position was cutting the blood circulation off to my lower legs. Between contractions, they told me I had to lift up. Apparently, my legs were very dark with blood.

My husband went down to the other end, and then he came up and said, “Jamie! She has hair! Do you want to feel it?” Apparently, he touched it, and I told them not to effing touch me. The student midwife kept reaching up to adjust the monitor and it hurt so, so bad. My skin was so sore, I couldn’t bear it. Soon, they told me that with the next push, she would be out and I would meet her, so I pushed with all I had. It was a relief when she came out.

Hyla Sophia Evans was born at 8:55 am on October 7, 2013. My husband cut the cord, and he held her up to the sun while they were working on me. We had skin-to-skin while they stitched up my tear, and she latched on within 15 minutes of birth.

It was a wonderful experience, and I won’t hesitate to give birth with the midwives at that hospital next time. If you made it through my novel, you deserve a medal.