the story (and boy is it one for the ages)

home from the hospital so i can finally relay the whole crazy story. little quentin certainly has a flair for the dramatic. at 5:00 a.m. jeremy and my mom leave my parents' house in western mass to drive jeremy to the train station in worcester so that he can catch the 7:07 train to boston and be at logan airport by 10:30 for his flight to richmond. after tuesday's crazy false alarm, i woke up wednesday around 7 a.m. with mild contractions every 15-20 minutes. convinced that it was just roo playing with me again i ignored them and waited for them to just go away. and they did. by 11 a.m. i was contraction-free. i figured there was no reason to alarm jeremy - i wanted to make sure he got on the plane to close out things in richmond once and for all. i kept on working, reviewing some documents for work and doing email just like any other day. but then around 6 p.m. the contractions returned with a vengeance. figuring they'd be gone in an hour or two just like the morning edition i tried my best to ignore them despite the ever increasing pain. but by 8:30 p.m. they had not gone away. i decided to nonchalantly text message jeremy to have him call me. i didn't want to alarm him and send him into a frantic drive home with a half-packed rental moving truck. i was CONVINCED it was just another roo prank, though a little worried because these contractions were the worst pain i had ever experienced in my life. we decided i should call the 24-hour on-call hotline for my boston doctor and see what they thought i should do. i called and spoke to the on-call physician. she said it could be early labor, but likely it was another false alarm. either way she wanted me to get checked out, but agreed that is was silly to drive all the way back to boston only to have it be another false alarm. she encouraged me to go to a hospital here to find out. that way if it was another roo joke we could be back home in 20 minutes. or if it was the real deal early labor, we could pack up and head for boston since labor usually takes a while for 1st time mommies. seemed like a pretty solid plan. the bag was still packed from the day before, though i hadn't had time to update its contents, pack up the finally correct "roo" bag, or do any of the other things i wanted to quickly check off my list. i didn't think it mattered anyway, i was sure i'd be coming right back home anyway. i got up to go grab my stuff and my mom and whoooooooosh. there it was. the big rush of water. guess my water finally broke. maybe it was time afterall. mom and i drove to mercy hospital in springfield, which ironically some random lady in babies r us told us was way better than the other hospitals in the area should roo want out in western mass. guess we needed that advice after all. after explaining the whole richmond/boston move and explaining why i was in springfield instead of either richmond or boston to like 6 different people, we got on with the same routine as the day before. nitrozine test, looking for ferning, etc. first test on wednesday - both negative. no explanation for the continued watery mucus. we'd repeat the test again in an hour. been down this road before! they did look to see how far dilated i was - 2 centimeters. but i could have been that way for days and not known it since mass general hadn't checked on tuesday. contractions continued this whole time, so i spent the hour staring at the water spots on the hospital triage room ceiling. an hour later, they ran both tests again. again both tests negative. the nurse had the on-call midwife come in to check me out. i was suddenly 4+ centimeters and in active labor. well how bout that. i have no clue when my water actually broke, or why it never showed on any of the tests they ran. i continue to be an enigma. there was probably not enough time to get me to boston so they got me admitted to the hospital there. i called jeremy and we tried to figure out what to do. at that point (11 p.m.) he was in richmond, in a half-packed house, with only a half-packed moving truck to drive. he had been up since 4 something in the morning and it would be an 8 hour drive at a minimum. even if he left immediately there was a high likelihood he wouldn't make it back in time. but we decided, this was roo, our first born. he had to at least try. he finished up a couple of quick things and got on the road by 12:30. i got set up in my room while he got on the road. i had already progressed to 5 centimeters so it was epidural time. life was damn good after that. i couldn't feel a thing. the next time they checked me, about 2 hours later i was still 5 centimeters. seems i had stalled after more speedy beginning. bad for labor, but good for jeremy's chances of getting there in time. unfortunately for jer, they started me on the pitocin to get me moving forward again. also unfortunately for him, he was exceedingly tired due to tuesday stress and wednesday's early start and moving activities. he had to stop often to prevent himself from falling asleep behind the wheel of a big yellow moving truck. i was 7 centimeters the next time they checked me and jeremy was in new jersey. he still had an outside shot. but they checked me again less than an hour later and i was 10 centimeters. it was go time. all hope was lost - daddy would not be present for roo's birth. the nurses had him pull of the road and had him on speaker phone in the delivery room so he could hear what was going on and could talk to me. it did not go as fast as we had hoped from there. unfortunately for me this time, my epidural had completely worn off and roo had a massive head to push through. i pushed for two hours before roo finally made it all the way out. (this is where it gets a bit graphic.) fun for me - one of the midwives took lots of excessively graphic photos of this for jeremy. when i finally got roo's massive noggin through, the cord was wrapped around his neck so they snipped it before he was completely out, splattering blood everywhere. quentin joseph rupon was born at 9:20 a.m. weighing in at 7 pounds, 10 ounces and measuring 20 1/4 inches. because of the cord thing, he didn't get to stay in the room with me for too long. they did the apgar tests (poor kid only got a 3 the first time due to the cord issue) and let me see him for about a minute before he was whisked away to the nursery to get started on IV fluids. i had a rough time pushing through the placenta, apparently because i had an extra fun 3-lobed one. the nurses were quite fascinated. i then got stitched from my awesome 2nd degree tears and thought maybe now i could get some rest. nope. that's when the endless parade a nurses, midwives, pediatricians, visitors, etc. started coming through. jeremy finally made it there around 2:30 and got to meet his son for the first time. yeah! more than 60 hours later i have yet to get more than 1 consecutive hour of sleep. there's more to type - adventures in breastfeeding, dangerously low hemoglobin levels for mommy, jeremy bullying a midwife... but i am way too tired to type any more. those can wait til tomorrow. i will also get my mom to email me some pics so i can get them up here asap! even after all of this, i heart roo.