A lot of progress was made last night. At around 9 pm, I took Gabru for a walk in the park. Forty-five minutes later, Allison called me and told me to get home ASAP so we could start timing contractions.
I rushed home as fast as Gabru would allow me, pulled out my copy of The Birth Partner and turned to a page that had a chart for timing contractions. The contractions were lasting about a minute and the first couple I timed occurred with intervals of 10, 14, and 8 minutes. For the next hour, Allison had contractions every 6-8 minutes that lasted 40-65 seconds. During this time, I began rubbing Allison's lower back to help her through the contractions, which seemed rather painful. We continued to note the length and intervals for some more time and tried to catch some sleep in between contractions. I definitely did a better job at the sleeping part than Allison. The contractions started to slow down in frequency around 4 am... she is now asleep upstairs and still having a few strong contractions each hour.
What does all this mean? It means the baby is on it's way, and inducing the baby is probably no longer necessary. It also means Allison is going to have a long painful labor (full respect that labor is painful). My mom delivered me in under five hours while Allison has been having contractions for the past 36 hours. While the contractions have slowed for the moment, we anticipate they will pick up with more energy sometime later today.
I rushed home as fast as Gabru would allow me, pulled out my copy of The Birth Partner and turned to a page that had a chart for timing contractions. The contractions were lasting about a minute and the first couple I timed occurred with intervals of 10, 14, and 8 minutes. For the next hour, Allison had contractions every 6-8 minutes that lasted 40-65 seconds. During this time, I began rubbing Allison's lower back to help her through the contractions, which seemed rather painful. We continued to note the length and intervals for some more time and tried to catch some sleep in between contractions. I definitely did a better job at the sleeping part than Allison. The contractions started to slow down in frequency around 4 am... she is now asleep upstairs and still having a few strong contractions each hour.
What does all this mean? It means the baby is on it's way, and inducing the baby is probably no longer necessary. It also means Allison is going to have a long painful labor (full respect that labor is painful). My mom delivered me in under five hours while Allison has been having contractions for the past 36 hours. While the contractions have slowed for the moment, we anticipate they will pick up with more energy sometime later today.
Posts
