It was shortly after midnight when I woke up having to pee. At nearly 34 weeks pregnant waking up in the middle of the night to pee was commonplace. However, there was nothing common about that night.
Thirty minutes later, I was awake again having to pee, but this time it hurt. I tried to go back to bed again, but within 30 minutes, I was back in the bathroom and starting to think something might be wrong.
By now it was nearly 2 AM, my two-year-old daughter, Emma, was asleep down the hall, and my husband was out of town. I was pacing between my bed and the bathroom trying to convince myself that I was ok and that I didn’t need to go to the hospital. I still had 6 weeks until my baby girl was due. At the same time, I was trying to figure out how I could get to the hospital, as I probably shouldn’t drive myself, and what would I do with Emma?
I had a neighbor, Carol, on call to help with Emma when her sister was born, but my baby wasn’t due for 6 more weeks, and Carol was out of town. Emma was born 4 weeks early so I was anticipating that her sister would come early too, but not yet. I wasn’t ready. It was too early.
My mind was in go mode working on how to get to the hospital and what to do with Emma. Who else would be awake at 2 AM? Or have their phone on to answer a call or text? Shortly after 2 AM, I called my OBGYN and I text my husband to let him know something was up.
My pregnancy was being closely watched and labeled as high risk due to my own health issues. Two weeks prior I had been sent to the hospital when I had some serious cramping that turned out to be a UTI. I felt so silly, and I didn’t want to go through that again, particularly at 2 AM. The pain I was experiencing that night felt similar to the pain from the UTI, and I had my 34-week appointment scheduled for 8 AM that morning so I was convinced I could make it through the night and see the doctor in the morning. When the doctor called back, I asked if there was anything I could do for the pain to get through the night, and there really wasn’t. The doctor asked if I thought I was in labor, and I did not. Oh, how wrong I was.
The doctor encouraged me to take a hot shower and go back to sleep. Hearing that recommendation gave me a sudden feeling of deja vu to when my oldest daughter, Emma, was born. She was born 4 weeks early, and similarly, I woke in the middle of the night, in pain, however that time I had a gut feeling that the baby was coming. When I called the doctor that night I was also encouraged to take a hot shower and go back to bed because it was too early for the baby to be born. Less than three hours later I was holding Emma in my arms (and that is a story for another day).
After I got off the phone with the doctor, I text my husband again, this time to tell him about my feeling of deja vu and oddly he was awake as well. He reassured me that the doctors knew my history and that I should take their recommendation. Part way into my shower I realized I wasn’t just in pain, I was having contractions and they were coming fast. It was like the water calmed and honed my senses to allow me to realize what was happening, my baby girl was ready to be born.
The contractions were so intense and so close together by the time I got out of the shower and got dressed, I knew I needed to get to the hospital, and fast. I text and called a few friends with no answer. I wasn’t surprised, it was nearly 3 AM. And then I started to feel the urge to push, and realized there was no way I could drive myself to the hospital.
The sensation to push is like no other, a weird mixture of pain and involuntary screaming and grunting. I only knew what it was because I remember when I got to the hospital the night Emma was born the nurses saying that I came in pushing, and I was feeling the exact same sensation.
I needed help.
I called the doctor’s answering service back to tell them I was in labor and then somehow I had enough sense to call 911. When the 911 operator asked how close my contractions were, between screams I told her “you just heard two of them, how close were they?” Then they asked me if I could get to the front door to unlock it. Nope. I was upstairs in my bathroom and there was no way I was going to make it down the stairs to unlock the front door. And oh yay, my house alarm was on too.
It was getting harder to talk because the pain was so intense, the contractions were so close together, and my body’s natural instinct to push had taken over. I was instructed to lay down on the floor, get a towel or blanket, and feel between my legs for my baby’s head.
Oh, things were getting real. I could feel her slimy little head, she was coming. The 911 operator was very nice and calmly encouraged me to “do what my body needed to do” and reassured me that help was on the way.
Soon I could hear the sirens coming up the street. I gave the 911 operator instructions to get a key to my house from my neighbor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the number of my neighbor's house across the street, I was just able to explain that they lived directly across the street from me. As luck would have it the house the firefighters went to first, was not the one with the key. “It’s the house with the fence, we watch each other’s dogs” I remember saying when they said the neighbor didn’t have a key.
Then I heard my front door open, my alarm go off, and I started screaming “Help. Please help. I’m upstairs.” Within moments there were multiple firefighters in the bathroom with me, and two scurried down on the ground with me just in time to catch my baby girl.
At 3:22 AM on Wednesday, June 29, 2016, Clara Anastasia Roeder was born on my bathroom floor.