Now that I look back, I feel like I must have been in labor for almost 2 weeks. I was so unsure about whether I was in labor that I met my midwife 2 weeks before Chloe's due date of 4/16/08 (same day as Noah's) to pick up the aqua doula tub. I frantically ran around the rest of the afternoon picking up all of the things on the recommended list such as loose comfrey(to make perineal pads), sea salt (for the tub), a sterile hose (found in the RV section, by the way), etc. I made Jello b/c I remembered how great it tasted last time. We were stocked up on drinks and I filled the fridge. When I got home with my bags and bags of supplies, I insisted that Michael set up the tub TODAY. I was having contractions every hour, but they weren't at all painful, just uncomfortable. Since my water broke with Noah I had immediate intense contractions that were 5 minutes apart which quickly progressed to 3 minutes apart w/in an hour. So, I never had prelabor. I thought that this must be what was happening and thought that by tomorrow night (sunday) we'd have a baby. So we went for a walk to the "big" park with Noah and I remember telling people when they looked at my belly and asked when I was due that it could be anytime now. Then we went home and waited. And waited. Contractions would come back but never get closer than 30min to an hour apart, never consistently. This went on for days and I just kind of got used to it and thought that they must just be Braxton Hicks since they didn't go anywhere.
That big old aqua doula tub sat in our bedroom taking up alot of space for 2 weeks. At least it matched our linens.
The good new is that my mom arrived on Monday, April 14th while we were waiting. We were nervous that maybe we would go past the due date and she would miss her grand-daughter's birth since she was only here for 2 weeks. It was really nice having her around to take care of Noah. I felt best during the 3 rd trimester (the first 2 were terrible - I bonded with the toilet almost daily), but I was starting to get tired out pretty quickly and wasn't sleeping very well. So mom was a wonderful reprieve and great support. My sister Mandi showed up with Lucca on Tuesday so the boys had a blast together. The weather was sunny and in the 70's so it couldn't be more beautiful. But everyone wanted to see the baby.
Michael and I still had our Hawaii driver's licenses and plates. We found out that we could only get Chloe a birth certificate in CA with CA driver's licenses. So on Wednesday we stood at the DMV in Santa Rosa from 10AM until we got home at 4PM that night. Being 10 months pregnant cuts you no slack at the DMV, in case you were wondering. Lots of standing around. We did get out to Baja Fresh to pick up lunch luckily, between our licenses and registration.
We went home and mom and Mandi had made us dinner and we just sat around talking and catching up . The boys were tired b/c they had spent most of the day at the pool. I was pretty tired out and went to bed around 8:30, much earlier than normal.
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