The Weeks Before Conner's Birth

Conner was officially born on Feb. 28th 2009. The weeks before he was born I was very excited for him to come, and was hoping he would make his appearance sooner rather than later. For one thing I wanted to go into labor naturally and not to be induced, and especially not to have a c-section. Second, I wanted to make the most of my maternity leave and wanted as much time as possible with my little guy. For the 2 weeks before he actually came I would have contractions every evening, sometimes to the point where I would wonder if it was actually time or not. But every time they would stop and I would wake up the next morning minus contractions. It got to the point where I would try to ignore them, even if they were painful as I did not want to get my hopes up. My last day of work before my maternity leave was Feb. 20th and I was very excited to be done with work. Not only was I exhausted and uncomfortable everyday, with the economy the way it is everything was a lot more stressful and the pressure from management was not something that I wanted to deal with - I had a lot of other things on my mind. The evening of the 20th I went on a walk with my parents and the dogs as Andrew was at work. My plan for the next few days was to walk and keep moving as much as possible to try and encourage labor. On the 21st I went to water aerobics with my mom and then a long walk down to the store with Andrew and the dogs. On Sunday Andrew and I went over to my parent’s house for dinner and went on another walk down the trail. Every evening I continued to have contractions, but nothing that went anywhere. The next few days I continued the routine of water aerobics and walking as well as trying to get as much sleep as I could.

On Wednesday evening (Feb. 25th) I had pretty painful contractions but again I did not get my hopes up. This time they lasted until about 2am and kept me up part of the night. But by morning they had disappeared for the most part and I went about my day as usual. They started up again Thursday evening and continued throughout the night this time. Waking me up sometimes, but allowing me to get some extended periods of sleep. I was woken up at 7:30am by another contraction and I was up for the day. I continued to have some contractions throughout the morning and that started me thinking that maybe this time was different. They were uncomfortable contractions, but nothing too painful yet. I called my mom around 10am to let her know that I might be in labor as they were somewhat consistent. I also let Andrew know and asked him if he could drive me to the store to gather supplies to make cookies and to get a couple of movies to watch throughout the day.

More to come later as Conner is awake and asking to be fed!