Around midnight: I get up for five minutes to turn on the irrigation. (We have old-fashioned flood irrigation.) Then as I’m going back to sleep shortly thereafter, I roll over and I feel a gush of fluid, and I know…my water broke! No questions about it. I get up, wake up Joe, and we realize we have to go to the hospital. So the next while was spent packing and figuring out where to go that is covered by our insurance and takes care of preemie babies. I’m still wrapping my mind around the fact that I’m going to have a baby.

Checking in, getting all the paperwork in took a while. And then we waited. I had antibiotics, a couple of steroid shots, and some iffy contractions, and a few attempted naps. Eventually, it turned into Pitocin. Finally, it was a little bit harder to watch the show we were watching but not too bad…and the pressure moved lower…and I knew I was getting close.

So I called in the nurse, and sure enough, we headed over to the OR. (They always deliver preemies in the OR.) And within ten minutes of getting there, and one good contraction, my little guy was here. Pink, small but not too small, and crying just a bit. I held him for a minute, and then they whisked him off to evaluate him.

At five weeks early, he was 5 lbs 11 oz, and 19 1/4 long. No problems with breathing, a little cold but otherwise just perfect for his age. The strangest thing of most lasting impact is an extra thumb on his right hand! (I have no problem with that, it just makes him an interesting baby and we will figure out if we need to do anything about it down the road.)

Even though this wasn’t the birth I expected, I’m happy with how everything went. I had plans to deliver at a birth center, and I frankly wasn’t very happy with the care I was getting and had a lot of doubts. Going to the hospital wasn’t a disappointment. Labor and recovery were easy for me: I was watching TV through my contractions up until the end, and that lasted about twenty minutes. (I’ve never had an epidural not because I am a strong person, but simply because I have easy labors.)

Baby is doing well, and I’ll write more about him later!