Birthing Lisel Blossom -- Part 2: Shy Uterus Syndrome

At 8:30am, we figured it was time to let the doctor know what was up. I knew it wasn’t time to go to the hospital but maybe they would want know. Or maybe I should say, I wanted to tell them. We had been to the birth class, read the pamphlet, studied the book, but still when the rubber hit the road, we weren’t totally sure of protocol. So we called the doctor, fully expecting them to tell us to stay home and keep breathing.

But they asked us to come in.

Now, I’ll admit, I can be a bit of a hypochondriac. And during the course of my pregnancy, I had made more than a few false alarm type visits to the doctor’s office. It was those damn pregnancy books. Every time I read about some kind of problem that I could potentially expect when I was expecting it would send me into a worry tailspin and more often than not make me put in a call to the doctor.

Four months into the pregnancy we renamed this tragedy of a book and threw it away!

And on Christmas Eve I had an episode where I thought maybe my water had broken. So I went to the hospital. And got totally checked in and totally checked out. And it was a false alarm. I was pretty damn embarrassed. So embarrased that I swore Dave to secrecy. No one, not even my family, was going to know what a spazz I could be.

Which is all to say that when we went to the doctor’s office I was more than a little nervous. I mean, maybe I wasn’t in labor. Maybe I was just convincing myself that I was feeling regular pains, which I assumed to be labor. Maybe I was in a self-induced state of wishful thinking labor. With me, anything was possible.

And sure enough, I got to the doctor’s office and the contractions slowed down. I was a little worried, but not too worried, since I was still actually having contractions.

But then they took me to a tiny room, sat me down in a La-Z-Boy and hooked me up to a monitor that measured my contractions and the baby’s heartbeat. And for a good half hour I didn’t have one contraction.

Not a one.

I watched the paper printout spilling out of the machine. My line, the line that should have been all hills of contractions and valleys of the time in between was straight. I wanted Colorado and all I was getting was Kansas.

I tried to take my mind off of the fact that I quite possibly had psyched myself into some kind of false labor state. I had Dave read to me from a frivolous female oriented magazine about some blonde starlet I’d never really seen before. I cracked jokes and apologized to the nurses. I prayed secretly and silently to any and all higher powers out there to please make this be the real thing. And still nothing happened.

Dave and I then came up with the official diagnosis of shy uterus syndrome. Sometimes, your organs just get stage fright. Mine certainly did. Dave Say: Certainly everyone has experienced – or in my case, had a “very good friend” whose experienced – less than forthcoming bowels or a timid bladder. Right? My uterus was just not going to go out there and show the doctors what she could do. She stayed backstage while the cameras were on.

Luckily, as soon as I got up from the chair I had a massive contraction that almost buckled my knees out from under me. I was really in labor! Woo-hoo! For once, it wasn’t a false alarm

Tommorrow: Going to the Hospital and we’re gonna have a baby