The jokes my body plays

I went in on Monday to the doctors because I thought my water had broke. I found out it hadn't, I was dialated to a 3, and had not dropped. I had my membranes stripped for the second time, but the doctor sounded like he expected to see me at my appt. this Fri. And so I went and taught dance class that afternoon. Nothing that night. Nothing all day on Tues. However Tuesday night I couldn't go to sleep because of back pain-same way things started with Benjamin. But with Benjamin the pain quickly turned into contractions. Not with this one. An hour and a half later I decided to take a bath so I could ease up and get to sleep. Joseph raised his head to see what was going on and I told him, "nope we're not going to the hospital tonight, I just want to take a bath to stop the pain". With all the false alarms of late I was sure of this. Suprise, a few minutes later, the pain became contractions and I went to wake Joseph and call my parents to get Benjamin. We got to the hospital at 1am and I was a 4 1/2. A half an hour later a 5. I thought great this labor will be nice and short. Then once I got the epidural, all contractions stopped. What a joke-this was too late for my body too pull another false alarm. And so came the oxytocin, which helped things along-barely. The nurse around 6am said I was still a 5 and they were going to break my water to help things along. (The baby still hadn't dropped.) They called the doctor in because it felt like blood vessels from the placenta had grown onto the water sac. If so, I would go in for a c-section because the baby or I could bleed out if the vessels broke. He came in, told me I was a 7, and found a clean spot on the water sac to break. I was oh so very relieved to not have a c-section. 2 hours later I started pushing. 20 minutes later Garrett was born. I love having a smaller baby than Benjamin, only a small episiotomy and minimum tearing. He at first had to go to NICU for half of the day. His breathing was too fast and sugar levels were too low. But he is all better now. I think he is much better tempered than Benjamin was. He doesn't cry a lot, loudly, or for long periods of time-yet. He does have day and night mixed up and was genty fussy at night. Such a difference from Benjamin's all-night howling. And so that is how my labor experience #2 went.