Without further ado, the birth story

It has been a whole month since the little kitten was born and I am finally starting to get some free time here and there. The first month was pretty tough feeding-wise and I've essentially been a dairy cow 24/7. But now I better write this down before I forget everything.

First, here are some quick stats:

• K was born at 11:55am on November 11, 2012. 
• We took her home at 6:30pm that day (yes, that WAS crazy!)
• She weighed 3.025 Kg (6 lbs 10 oz) and was 47 cm long.
• Labour lasted a total of 33 hours from when I woke up with real contractions. The early labour lasted about 24 hours until the contractions became regular and I was admitted to the hospital. 
• It hurt like hell
• I would do it all over again

Now, the long story:

On Friday, November 9th I was feeling pretty good. I drove hubbs to a hockey game at around 7pm and on the way home was feeling some very mild contractions, which was no different from the weeks before. I went to bed as usual.

At 2am (Saturday) I woke up with stronger contractions but they were very far apart so I tried to watch some TV and go back to sleep. The contractions started getting more painful and I could not go back to sleep, but they were very sporadic so I waited til 5am to wake up hubbs (mainly to tell him to get his work done for the day so he would be free in case this was the real thing). At around 9am I called the midwife to give her a heads up that I was feeling what appeared to be real labour.

[At this point, I was 38w4d pregnant so it was not too surprising, but honestly I wish I had more time to myself to get things done. I only had one week off work and was hoping for a few more days to just bum around the house and collect my strength - strength which I would desperately need to deliver the babe.]

The midwife told me that my contractions were too far apart (7-12 mins apart) to be active labour, but I should call back that night to figure out what to do next. By about 8pm, the contractions were still getting more painful but not very close together. The midwife came over and advised that I was not close to having the baby and I should get some sleep. There was no way I could sleep through the contractions, so we went to the hospital to get a morphine shot.

At the hospital, they made me do an NST before giving the morphine, but there was something wrong with the machine readout so it was almost midnight before I got the shot. Almost 24 hours into it and I was still only 2cm dilated and we got punted back home for the night. By this point I was pretty exhausted and in a lot of pain without any prospect of it ending, so I was happy to get the drugs. Unfortunately, the shot only gave me 3 hours of reprieve and I was up again at 3am.

By 5am I noticed that I was not feeling any fetal movement and I got a bit concerned so I called the midwife. She said it's probably the morphine in my system that's making the baby sleep for so long, but we should get it checked out so off to the hospital we went again. We got there at around 6am and got the baby checked out. There was also talk of possible petocin if I had not progressed and I was starting to get really discouraged. But as it turned out, baby was fine AND I was 7cm dilated! The midwife figured that the morphine had allowed me to relax enough to get things going. Off we went to the delivery room.

To be continued...