Kristine's Story

I was two weeks overdue and scheduled to be induced on Monday. Suddenly around 7:00 PM Saturday night, I started feeling rather uncomfortable and crampy. My husband asked what was wrong and I said I feeling weird.

This was my first pregnancy and we learned from our instructor at the prenatal classes that contractions would start gradually, approx. 20-30 minutes apart for many hours before they started to get closer together. She even told us to do gardening, groceries or whatever as the baby would be a while coming and when we felt them 5-7 minutes apart we should start heading to the hospital.

By 8:00 I was in severe pain and the contractions were coming every 3 minutes. I called the hospital (not wanting to make fools of ourselves by racing down there only to find out they were false contractions, or going too soon as our instructor told us not to RUSH to the hospital), they told us to come on down. Needless to say, my husband went into shock when I told him we needed to head to the hospital. Neither one us could believe this was actually happening. After being 2 weeks overdue we were sure everyone had made a mistake and I wasn't pregnant after all, or else this baby just was never going to make an entrance into this world or even worse, I would be pregnant forever!

We had been on a tour of the hospital and hoped we would get a birthing room. These rooms were complete with TV's, VCR's, whirlpools, etc. and looked exactly like your bedroom, every pregnant woman in city prayed to have this room! When the time came to have the baby they just put the rails up on the bed and you delivered right there. My husband was told he could bring munchies and even his swim suit to go into the whirlpool with me. So, while I am sitting in the car waiting, he is running around the house looking for his bathing suit, he did not want to miss his swim!

It was not a pleasant trip to the hospital, my husband was driving 100 kms in a 50 km zone and only said that if he did get pulled over he would have a really, really good excuse. You must understand, because the contractions were only 3 minutes apart from the beginning, according to our prenatal instructor, we thought it would only be a matter of about 20 minutes and this baby was coming! My husband did not want to deliver this baby himself, he preferred to be a spectator.

We could not have been more wrong! I did get a birthing room and finally received an epidural after approx.20 hours in hard labour (I told the anaesthesiologist that I loved her). Up until that moment we tried walking the halls (I sat down every time a contraction came), being in the whirlpool (my husband did not swim with me, I think he was afraid I would drown him because it was him that put me in this condition in the first place). I had back labour as well, which usually means the baby is posterior and I was caught off guard by this as throughout my pregnancy I had no back pain at all. We tried sitting, laying, massaging (none of which we remember from our wonderful prenatal classes). Not much helped the pain except knowing that I would get to meet this little being I had been carrying for what seemed like forever! Finally, after a total of 30 hours I got to start pushing! After 2 hours of that the doctor told me he could help me along with the forceps and in a matter of minutes my baby would be born. He promised this would not hurt my baby so I okay's it and we finally met our daughter, Kaitlyn, 8 pounds, 12 ounces and perfectly healthy, thank god. I needed an episiotomy as she was rather large, but I suffered no ill effects afterward from it (except walking like a penguin for about a week).

It was truly the most amazing, miraculous moment of our lives and I knew once I held her, I would do it all again in a minute. However, while I was in hard labour my husband told me "you don't ever have to do this again honey". My husband was a rock and I was surprised by his behaviour because during our prenatal classes he had to turn away during the movie and I thought "he'll be passing out on me". I have never seen him so emotional or proud and he glows every time he looks at his daughter, who is now 12 months.

I thank God everyday for my daughter. I often wonder what I did that was so wonderful for God to have given me such a gift. I never imagined I could love someone so much.

From what I hear the next one shouldn't be so difficult (I still don't think I would be doing any gardening) and I look forward to experiencing those moments again (pain and all), the outcome of it all is so very worth it.