I had planned that my last day of work before starting maternity leave would be May 3rd. I figured this would give me a few days off before my due date to relax and do any last minute things. Given my family's history I thought for sure he would arrive at the end of April, so once I made it to my last day of work I was afraid this child was never coming and that I would spend the first few weeks of maternity leave at home, miserable and swollen.
My sister, being the saint that she is, had already planned to come to PA in May and stay until Wyatt made his debut. She ended up coming a week earlier than planned and stayed busy while I was at work cooking, cleaning, running errands, and painting a piece of furniture for our dinning room.
My first day of maternity leave we worked on a few last minute decorations for the nursery, trying to stay busy and not dwell on the fact that he wasn't here. Tuesday evening, May 7th, I got a huge burst of energy and did some quick night time walking with Jessica. I had also done some squats and treadmill walking earlier in the day (Jessica was very motivated to keep me moving so she could meet her nephew). I can only imagine how ridiculous I looked doing these exercises at 39 weeks and 4 days pregnant.
Wednesday morning I woke up and knew that all of our hard work from the day/night before had started something because I had contractions all day long. Jessica had a makeup consultation (Mother's Day Gift from Dano) that we went to and afterwards we headed to the mall to do a little shopping. I had been timing my contractions as they had been about every 10-15 minute, so nothing to get all panicky about. Once we got home I called the doctor to schedule an appointment for the next day to get checked and see what was going on. Being my first pregnancy I assumed I was having contractions, but wasn't 100% sure.
That evening we had dinner on the patio and decided to take a family walk afterwards. Well that was when the contractions REALLY started to kick in. All I remember was Sven was walking Gunnar, Jessica was pushing Harlow in the stroller and Mabry was talking my ear off and I could barely keep up or pay attention to what Mabry was saying. I laid on the couch for a little when we got home and the contractions seemed to slow down some. So we continued to hangout for the evening and at about 10:30 the contractions started to become more painful and about 3/4 minutes apart. My sister said she knew it was time for me to go to the hospital when I came downstairs crying during a contraction (Sven was in the shower). I made the call to the midwife letting them know we were coming in. Sven and I grabbed what we needed to and were headed off to the hospital at about 11:30pm.
