Abby’s Birth story–part 1

 Abigail Miriam Hanke is here!! Abby was born at 12:57 a.m. on March 1st. She was 6lbs, 10 oz of pure cuteness.  To say I’m in love is an understatement.

Our birth story….. (sorry for all of the detail…wanting to document it for myself).

I went to work as usual on Wednesday morning (Leap Day). My kids had earned a Pajama Day for collecting BoxTops, so for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was feeling somewhat comfortable. I was wearing black yoga pants and a hoodie–perfect for heading to the hospital.

I went about the morning as usual. I was celebrating Leap Day with my class, so we were doing all kinds of frogs activities. I was having cramps on and off, but they didn’t feel any different from the cramps I’d been having for the past few days. Although now that I think about it, I’d had some serious cramping while at the grocery store the previous night. It was almost embarrassing because I kept having to stop due to the sharp shooting pains I was feeling. That was probably the "most" I ever felt like I was in labor up until I was at the hospital. Starting the weekend before her birthday I had been cramping, but they mostly went away whenever I laid down.

So anyway, I was feeling cramps and was generally uncomfortable, but really didn’t feel like I was going into labor. Ironically, Wednesday was the first day all week when I didn’t feel like labor was imminent. My teaching aid always takes my kids out to recess while I have my lunch break. I was feeling impatient with my kiddos and ended up telling three of them they needed to wait back with me before going out to recess. I can’t even remember what they were doing now…..

After a couple of minutes I took them out to meet the rest of our class, and I went to heat up my lunch. I went to the bathroom and when I wiped, noticed blood. I had read that bleeding can be a sign of labor, but I was still worried. A labor and delivery nurse(a close friend-her son was in my class last year) volunteers as our school nurse, and thankfully she was working that day. As I walked to her office I noticed increased pain. She reassured me that the bleeding was normal, but told me if I felt contractions coming close together I should call my doctor or go to the hospital. While she and I were talking (only about five minutes), I had two contractions. She told me that if I wanted, she would check me to see how dilated/effaced I was. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time someone has been checked in our school nurse’s office.  The nurse told me I was four and a half centimeters, and 90% effaced. Due to the fact that this was my third delivery (I guess they tend to go more quickly each time) and I was having consistent contractions, the nurse told me I should go to the hospital. At first I was going to try and wait it out, but the contractions were getting uncomfortable.

I went back to the early childhood floor to let all of my friends know I was heading out (Will drove). It was actually really fun and neat to be at school when everything happened. For some reason I always envisioned I would go into labor in the middle of the night……

When I got to the hospital(12:30 p.m.) they checked me and I was 5cm dilated and still 90% effaced. I really felt like I needed to poop, but they told me that was Abby’s head. I thought my sweet girl was poop! 😉