Charlie was born on a Thursday; I was going to be 36 weeks that following Monday. I had just had my 35-week check-up that Tuesday (2 days before he was born) and everything looked good and I was on track to deliver the next month (my due date was June 20th). My older 2 kids were born right around their due dates, but Charlie decided it was time to join the family. My water broke at 4:30am on Thursday, May 19th, 2022, but I’ve never had that happen on its own before so I wasn’t sure that is what it was, I honestly thought I had just peed myself, which at almost 36 weeks pregnant was not that far-fetched. I cleaned myself up and changed my clothes. I did put a pad on just in case it happened again so I wouldn’t have to change clothes again, but I kept leaking, it felt like I was just peeing off and on. I waited until about 9am and I had been trickling off and on until then and I decided we needed to go to the hospital. I woke up Rob and hurriedly packed a bag while he quickly got ready. I tried not to cry on the way to the hospital because it was too soon to be in labor. We were both scared and nervous. We got to the hospital about 9:40am, they checked me out and said I was definitely in labor. I got an epidural about 11am and we just had to wait until I was dilatated enough. My SIL is a labor & delivery nurse and was working at a different hospital, but she switched and came to us to be my nurse. (She was also my nurse when Laura was born 😊). At about 3:30pm, we got moved to an OR room to deliver because it is right next to the NICU. When the doctor got there, she could see the top of his head, so she got ready real fast and I did not have to push long or hard and he was born at 3:45pm. They got him to the NICU right away and on oxygen to help him breathe. He was able to breathe on his own for long enough that he was able to leave the NICU and be with me in my room. But the next day, his jaundice levels were really high so he got taken back to the NICU and under lights and with a special light blanket. He spent several days in the NICU and was finally able to come home on 5/26, exactly 1 week after he was born. That was the longest week of our lives. Our older kids were still in school, so every day, we would make sure they went off to school, then we would go to the hospital until dinner, come home to eat, then either me and Rob or just one of us would go back to the hospital until 8 or 9 that night. And we did that every day for a week. I felt like I wasn’t really able to recover like with my older 2 because I was always driving to and from the hospital, I wasn’t able to really rest that first week after he was born. Plus, I had to pump and bring the breastmilk with me so the nurses would have something to give Charlie (we did say it was OK to do formula as well if they ran out of breastmilk or needed to supplement). With my older 2, I nursed pretty much from day 1 and never had to pump (I was a stay-at-home mom then), but that is a story for another day.
