And now, the rest of the story...

Many have asked how Beth's labor went. Here's how everything happened.

At about 2 AM Thursday morning she woke up having contractions about every 45 minutes. She had been having contractions irregularly for a few days, but they weren't even painful so we didn't think they were doing much. She was able to sleep through some of the contractions between 3 and 5 AM because they really weren't that painful, just much more noticeable. They gradually increased to about every 30 minutes but stayed mild.

She really was expecting this to go on for a long time, as we have both seen women have infrequent contractions for many hours, even days, before their true labor really began. So when it was time for me to go to work, we kept to the plan. We had decided beforehand that if she was having contractions every 5 minutes for about an hour (or if her water broke) that she would call me to come on home. I went on in to work at 7, after Beth told me "I think we're going to the hospital later today."

She proceeded to shower, shave her legs, and blow dry her hair through the 30 minute contractions.  Then at about 9 AM her contractions suddenly changed. They didn't gradually get more frequent or forceful, just like a switch changed to very painful contractions every 5 minutes.  We've both watched women go through false labor before, so she "calmly" worked on changing positions, moving around constantly. 30 minutes into these Beth was convinced it was the real deal. When she got close to an hour she called me, but the call didn't come through (I was seeing patients at the Health Department). I stepped out of the exam room and then my phone buzzed with a voicemail. I ran to listen and heard "I've been having contractions about every 3-5 minutes for an hour now...I think you need to come home." Of course I ran back to the workroom, handed off my pager (I had warned the residents I'm working with right now that this would probably happen today) and drove home as fast as I could.

We labored at home for about another hour. We tried moving in all different positions, but she obviously couldn't get comfortable.  Eventually we figured out that a cold, wet washcloth would help her cool off and feel a little better. When we hit 11:00, we knew it was time to go on into the hospital.  Clearly, Beth didn't want to restrict her body to one position, sitting in the car, but fortunately we only live about 10 minutes away. She was focused on one thing - these contractions better be doing something good, dilating her cervix or else she might go for the epidural after all. 

We made it to the hospital and got her in the door to a wheelchair. The folks at the desk were trying to move her on quickly, but there wasn't anybody available to take her upstairs.  Of course, being a doctor at that hospital has its advantages, so I took her myself. We took the shortcut through the emergency room, where we got some wide-eyed glances.  I had grabbed our hospital bags (a small suitcase with clothes, a backpack with the cameras, and the computer bag to send pictures), so I was laden down and pulling the suitcase with one hand, pushing the wheelchair with another. When we pulled up to the desk at the labor and delivery unit, they looked at Beth and knew that she needed to go on to a regular room to deliver, not just the triage room.

After getting her hooked up to the monitor and paperwork started, the nurses went ahead and checked her cervix and she was dilated to 7-8 cm. This greatly relieved Beth, knowing that if she made it this far she could go all the way. That was about 11:30. She started pushing not quite an hour later, and after only pushing for 29 minutes Jacob came. We had discussed Beth's goals of going without any pain medicine with her doctors and they were wonderfully supportive. We had also talked about letting me catch, and I had the amazing privilege of delivering my own son. 

Jacob perked up and started crying quickly and got to warm up on Beth's chest while she was still in the bed.  

And that is the rest of the story of how Jacob came.