• Dangerously high or steep.
• (of a change for the worse) Sudden and dramatic.

Precipitous is a great vocabulary word, although not when used to describe one’s labor and delivery.

It all started Friday early morning, around 2 am to be exact, when I woke up feeling a little crampy.  Not thinking much of it, as the pains were mild and sporadic, I was able to fall back asleep.  In the morning, I called my OB nurse just to check if maybe I had experienced contractions.  She quickly assured me that it must have been false labor, if anything, as the cramps went away.  I looked up false labor online and read stories of women who had several bouts of it before the real thing started.  The last thing I wanted was to go to the hospital only to be sent back home.  I was determined to follow the 5-1-1 rule – only call your OB and head to the hospital when your contractions are five minutes apart, lasting for one minute and occuring over an hour.  But, first I had to figure out what a real contraction felt like!

My day continued pretty uneventfully.  JR was at school from 9 – 5 pm, and would be through the weekend, so my parents were coming over to hang with me (just in case) and help me finish up some nursery projects.  Around 5 pm my mom and I took the doodles for a walk around the neighborhood.  I filled her in on my false labor experience, and we joked that maybe walking would kickstart the real labor process.  By 6:30 pm the cramping had returned.  Again, it was very mild, so I wasn’t too worried.  We had dinner reservations at 8 pm with friends, and of course I was going.  If this was false labor again, dinner would be the perfect distraction.

About a half hour before we left for dinner, I noticed the mild cramping was getting more intense – and there seemed to be a rhythm to it.  I had a contraction counter on my phone so I decided to track the cramps to see if they were progressing time-wise.  At that point the cramps were around two to three minutes apart and lasting about 30 seconds.  You may be thinking – STOP right there and head to the hospital, lady!  However, I still wasn’t sure that I was really having true contractions and they certainly weren’t following the 5-1-1 pattern.  I kept thinking that this was just another case of false labor.

By the time we got to the restaurant, I couldn’t talk through the cramps (aka contractions).  While everyone was reviewing the menu, my instinct finally kicked in that this may be the real thing – my “2 minute-30 second” pattern had continued for an hour so I called the OB again and she said I need to head to the hospital immediately.

JR and my mom drove me to the hospital and when I walked up to the lobby desk, one of the security guards remarked “You’re gonna have a baby!”  I guess my pained face said it all!

Fast forward through waiting for a nurse to admit us, filling out paperwork once we were admitted (even though I was already pre-registered), and finally making it to triage so they could see if I was in “actual labor” – all while having the most pain in my life coming in waves every two minutes.  The good news here is that when I was finally checked the nurse exclaimed, “You are 6 cm dilated – you’re gonna have a baby tonight!”  Relief washed over me for a few seconds (at least until the next contraction hit) as I finally accepted that I was indeed in real labor – and that yes, those were real contractions!  No 5-1-1 rule for me!

So here is where the precipitous (sudden and dramatic) part comes in folks…at that point, they rushed me down to the labor and delivery room.  They asked in triage if I wanted a epidural, to which I responded with a resounding YES!  As they set me up for the epidural, I felt an overwhelming urge to push.  The doctor rushed in and they checked me again – I was 10 cm dilated!  It had been just over an hour from when I was admitted to the hospital.

Let me take a small break from the delivery details and say that my mom and JR were incredible throughout this entire experience.  My mom was my labor coach, and did a phenomenal job of coaching me through each contraction.  I can only imagine how horrified I looked at certain points, but she maintained a smile and kept telling me how strong I was.  JR was there holding my hand and encouraging me every minute.  They made a great team and helped me find the strength I needed to get through this experience.  And I must not forget my dad – who made a surprise visit to the delivery room in the last few minutes before Elizabeth was born.  While that wasn’t part of the plan, I’m glad he was with us for his granddaughter’s birth.

Back to the delivery room…although I felt the urge to push, I still wanted my epidural!  I asked the nurse and she told me that they could try to give it to me, but that it would take at least 20 minutes to kick in and that I would have the baby before then.  Feelings of panic hit me, as I realized that my dreams of pain meds to help me get through the birth were no longer.  It was “go” time and I had no choice but to dig in my heels and have my baby.

After about 15 minutes of pushing, I was holding my baby girl in my arms.  It was the most incredible moment of my life – and yet so very surreal!  I had only realized I was in labor a few hours before and now here we were with our baby before us.

It’s taken us a while to process my very rapid labor and delivery – in fact, I think we’ll be processing it for a while to come.  I’ve done some reading up on precipitous deliveries and it’s not very common, especially for first-time moms.  And, while it might sound nice to get it over and done with quickly, it can also be very scary since you go from zero to 60 in such a short amount of time.  Contractions come on so quick that there’s very little time to recover between them and they can also be more intense than those in a normal labor.

All that being said, what an incredible birth story I have to share with Elizabeth one day!  I think she was just as excited to be with us as we were to meet her for the first time.

Now that she’s here and the rush is over, we can finally all slow down and enjoy every moment together…and we are.