Part II - The Ride to the Hospital

So, Friday afternoon, feeling fairly defeated that we did get my contractions to pick up, I decided to rest. IMW checked me again, and thought I might be at 8 or 9 cms, but it was really hard to tell because my water was broken and she wasn’t sure if she was feeling hair or cervix. Eventually, IMW left, and contacted some of her colleagues who are more experienced MWs, and one suggested I might be exhausted, and to try to rest some more. She thought that IMW may have miscalculated my dilation and that it was possible that I was still at 4cms. I refused to believe this though. A LMW called from my "official" practice. She wanted to know how I was doing (I had skipped my appointment for that week) and also, as I was officially post-dates, wanted to know when we could schedule my c-section. I found this to be an incredibly easy conversation, though I was forced to lie through my teeth and tell her I was not showing any real signs of labor. It was kind of amusing. I scheduled my c/s for the first available appointment on Monday morning, proud of myself that this did not disturb me at all. But, soon I started to get chills, but my face felt flushed. At first I just kind of wrote it off, but then I started thinking… this felt like a fever. I waited a little bit more, and then when it didn’t change, I took my temperature. It was 100.6 – I took it 3 times. While ordinarily this would only be a very low-grade fever and nothing at all to worry about [to Jenny V in the UK, 98.6 is considered a normal temperature, and a fever is anything 1 degree or more from that by most standards], being that my water was broken and I was so tired, I got concerned. We decided to call IMW, and she suggested several homeopathic options, or we could go to the hospital. This was such a hard choice to make. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the homeopathic choices working fast enough, but I didn’t want to end up being slaughtered again. In the end, I decided not to take any chances, and like it or not, heading to the hospital was becoming the safer choice. We had done just about everything we could do at home, and between the fever and the contractions not picking up, it was getting to be beyond the scope of IMW’s capacity. So, I had to contact LMW. I didn’t want her to know I had lied to her, and felt a little bad, so I had to cover my tracks. I told her that I hadn’t been sure but I thought my water broke the night before… in the tub rather than on my couch… and I didn’t really put it together that it had happened until just now. I told her contractions started pounding in shortly after I hung up with her. I told her I thought I had a fever, and also that I hadn’t slept hardly at all in three days. And that we were coming in. Getting ready to go to the hospital and the trip there were so hard. Grudgingly does not even begin to describe. We were defeated, and MB and I had to keep reminding each other that it was not the end of the road, this did not have to mean an automatic c/s. Packing was almost impossible – we had not prepared ahead of time for this because we didn’t want to focus on it. We forgot a lot of things – in fact, it’s amazing we remembered half of what we brought. And then we got into our car and drove off. It was a very long 15-minute ride. More Later…