I had my first whoops-that’s-not-labor moment. You hear about people having them, nervous first time moms running to the hospital only to be sent home a few hours later, still pregnant. That was me yesterday only I’m not a first time mom. With my first daughter my water broke and it was go time. This pregnancy has been so different. When I woke up Saturday morning I thought I had lost a bit of amniotic fluid in my jammie pants. I was nauseous and felt like one big Braxton Hicks contraction and when I called the on-call doctor, who I’ll name Dr. Bummer, he told me I should probably head on on in to the hospital to get checked out.

My family didn’t really go into emergency mode but we sort of did. Both my husband & I took showers, we packed up our daughters little suitcase, our bigger one and finally headed out the door. We called the whole crew, and put them on standby: my mom, my mother-in-law and our friends that are all set to watch our daughter when ‘Labor Day’ arrives. For all parties involved Saturday was a sort of limbo - is this it?

My daughter thought this was all a blast, we had rehearsed what would happen with her when her little brother arrives so she sort of had played out this scene before, only now it was for real… or something. After dropping her off we headed to the hospital where we entered the Labor & Delivery unit and then promptly learned that I was not leaking amniotic fluid, shoot. We should have taken off right then. We didn’t, you sort of can’t. Or at least you feel like you can’t. Wait there’s other things they want to check. They’ve got a million monitors on you and they know something you don’t. It was busy at the hospital so there were long periods of hearing nothing from the nurse, wondering what we’re waiting for, what’s going on that’s keeping us in there, keeping our family & friends on hold.

Finally the nurse busts in and says, “We’re not comfortable letting you leave, the tape (generated from the heart monitors) has us a little concerned with how the baby is reacting during your contractions.” the nurse tells me to try nipple stimulation which is not as sexy as it sounds, it hurts and it causes you to have contractions which are never sexy. I follow orders, ow, they need me to have three contractions in ten minutes, why - I don’t know. Then she tells me that even though they all know I want to try to do everything naturally, Dr.Bummer has suggested that I be induced, they would give me Cervadil Saturday night and by Sunday morning I would get a dose of Pitocin to start me on my way to labor.

The nurse looked at me like I would have a decision for her right then and there but I didn’t, I told her I would have to talk it over with my husband and she said, “Oh of course” and left. My husband basically told me that he thought we should go home, that hospitals and doctors are just induction happy. He also told me that the decision was mine and that he supported me in whatever choice I made. I was worried, on the one hand they were telling me they didn’t like what they saw - I didn’t like hearing that. You don’t want to be nine months pregnant and make the wrong choice, could walking out mean I was endangering my life and the life of my unborn baby? I didn’t know what to think. I called my mother-in-law who has three kids, my mom who has just me and my best friend who has two kids and asked them what they thought. They basically all agreed with my husband but also expressed concerns. I was left feeling almost certain we would go but I also had some more questions I wanted to ask the nurse.

When she returned I threw a few questions her way and determined from her answers that we would be going home and not inducing. She needed to just confirm with Dr. Bummer that I wasn’t in any medical danger leaving - that I was allowed to leave and then we could go. A while later she returned with an ultrasound machine. Why didn’t she bring that in hours ago? She told me they were going to check my amniotic fluid to make sure everything was fine. Can anyone explain why they didn’t haul this little machine in before suggesting induction? Anyone? Anyone? What if I had just, out of total fear, said, “Ok I guess you better induce me.” they wouldn’t have said, “Well lets do a quick ultrasound to make sure it’s necessary.” No. Instead they would have lined up my induction drugs and probably put me down as a ‘maybe’ on the c-section list since sometimes those labor inducing drugs don’t work. WHY?

The answer, I can only assume is that, like a bad mechanic, they looking at your wallet, those drugs cost money and that cesarian cost plenty and results in me renting their hospital space longer. How nice for them. How shitty for moms, especially moms like me who wanted to have a natural labor. When a mechanic lies to a (often female) customer about what’s wrong with their car, then charges them to fix things that don’t need fixing it’s one thing, but when it’s a doctor screwing around with not just a woman but a whole family! It’s just too disturbing.

When this other doctor came in that was going to perform the ultrasound, that wonderful goddess of a doctor, the first words out of her mouth were, “I thought your tape looked great and I would have sent you home hours ago, but here I am so let’s take a look.” SIGH! That’s right a great, big giant sigh with an exclamation point, that’s all I needed to hear. This fabulous lady doctor, I’ll name Dr. Zilliant showed us some gorgeous images of our baby. She confirmed for us that he’s all boy and told me my fluid levels looked great. But she could have told everyone there’s nothing to worry about from the beginning. She discussed openly with my husband & I how all those monitors do is result in increased occurrences of unnecessary cesarians - except in the rare cases where something else is wrong, pre-eclampsia, and other high risk pregnancy issues that need that sort of monitoring.

We left the hospital and the one good thing I took away from this is that I’m more resolved then ever to have my baby naturally. Screw you with your labor inducing drugs, you can keep your Cervadil and shove your Pitocin. Suddenly I’m in no hurry to have this baby and I don’t think I would have said that on Friday morning when I was cursing the way my maternity clothes are too tight, the way my throat is sore from all the heartburn and all the other complaints I could list so easily right now. ‘Get this thing outta me’ might be a familiar cry to my fellow mamas that are thirty-nine weeks pregnant like I am but not this mom, not any more.