B.B.
My son came 10 days early and I was definitely not ready, I still had to prepare the house for all the family that would stay with us following his birth, I had food to prepare, a house to clean, and laundry to do too. I had been losing my plug all week but didn't think much of it since I had been induced with my 1st and didn't recognize some of the signs. That day, I had lunch with my friends and then my husband and I spent 3 hours grocery shopping at Costco and Winco getting all of the food for the weeks following my delivery. I carrying a bunch of groceries, pushed carts and helped load the car. We got home and were putting all of the groceries away when I felt a tearing feeling in my side. I thought I had just pulled something during all of the activity that day. I lay down on the couch and my husband went to rent a movie. I started feeling some tightening in my abdomen but didn't realize for about 30 minutes that they were contractions...again because I had been induced before and they felt nothing like before. I started timing them and they were 5 min apart and 45-60 seconds long. I was thinking that I was having false labor after my busy day but decided to call the hospital and the nurse said I should come in to be checked. The problem was that we didn't have cell phones at the time and my husband was still out renting a movie. I waited another 30 minutes and he finally got home. When I told him we had to go to the hospital, he got really scared because this was his first experience with labor and delivery and my sister/birth coach had not arrived in town yet. I told him it was probably nothing but I needed to be checked just in case. By the time we got to the hospital, I was feeling the contractions pretty good but trying to act normal for my husband's sake. We got in the room, I let me nurse know that if this was real labor that I would want an epidural and she was like, yeah, yeah, you'll get one in a couple hours. I got into a gown, sat on the bed and my water broke! The nurse checked me, I was at a 5 and she promptly left the room to order my epidural. The contractions got 100 times worse and it took them an hour to finally come in an give me my epidural. I received my epidural and had my son less than an hour later.