Fear + Joy = babies (and no sleep)

It is five o'clock in the morning I am so TIRED but I cannot sleep. I have been awake since about three thirty tossing and turning, Uggggg! The question is, why? (and since my darling husband is still sound asleep and I don't want to ruin his night as I will need him to let me take a nap later, I am going to talk this through on my blog) So why can't I sleep well..... I had a bad dream, I have a lot of dreams lately thanks to my pregnancy and they are all so so so realistic I have to wake-up to realize that it is in fact a dream. I dreamed that my OB doctor you know the person who will be delivering my baby, told me that every time he has to deliver a baby he all but panics, he looked really depressed, clearly not something you want to hear from someone that you are trusting your life and your babies life to. No, I lost all confidence in this doctor and felt absolutely terrified! Luckily I woke-up and found this to be a dream, and a weird one at that. Now hopefully my doctor doesn't really feel this way and all can be well, but this got me to thinking..... I have been so afraid of having this baby, seriously throughout my entire pregnancy and actually even before that I have been dreading the day! I don't like it, I don't understand it, well I thought I didn't but in the last hour and a half of tossing and turning in bed I realized why, I am going to share this with you, whoever may be reading this, but be warned if you don't like birth stories do not read this, also it will be long, but it is your choice I am throwing this all out into the universe to help get it off my mind.
Here is the story:
When I was pregnant with my first baby my husband and I had just moved up to Holiday, UT I had quite my job and was looking for a new one. Then we found out our good news that we were in fact pregnant! This made finding a job a lot harder I mean who wants to hire someone who is pregnant when there are a ton of other younger and more energetic willing bodies to do the job? I didn't think anyone would hire me and as we were not struggling financially we decided it would be ok for me to just stay home. My job would be homemaker and baby builder. All went very smoothly I had plenty of time to read every book on pregnancy and labor and delivery I could get my hands on, I had no kids to keep me up at night or wake me up early in the morning I was well rested and things went very smoothly. Now since I had read everything one needs to know about having a baby (seriously I could have taught a class I knew so darned much) I felt very confident in having my own baby. I knew how to handle the pain I knew how to know when I was in labor and what to expect through out the entire labor and delivery process. I was fearless, something many people asked me about. This is how the conversation would go: "So are you scared?" Me: "Of what?" Them: "having your baby!" Me: "Not a bit"
Seriously I was so confident in myself and my darling Phillip had every confidence in me as well. Well my due date came and went I shrugged my shoulders and went about doing everything I would normally do. Four days after my due date I went to school with Phil walked all around UVSC no contractions no activity nothing, my baby wasn't coming anytime soon. We started driving home it was late after seven or eight in the evening and we hadn't had dinner. We decided to call in an order to cafe rio. We picked it up brought it home, turned on our favorite show "law and order: Criminal Intent" I think we watched "er" too. We sat on the couch and ate our dinner. It was probably close to ten o'clock and on Phil's insistence I decided to take some castor oil in the hopes that it would start my labor. Now if you have ever tasted castor oil you know how disgusting it is, thick and oily with a weird nutty flavor, Ick! The instructions on the bottle say to mix it with some juice so I mixed like half a table spoon in with my orange soda. Basically I took one sip tasted the stuff spewed it out of my mouth and started gagging! It was so yucky and the soda made it worse. A few minutes later I was in the bathroom with pain in my belly I figured was just from gagging and maybe eating too much. To put it bluntly I felt like I had diarrhea, I didn't! I stayed in that bathroom for what felt like an hour before Phil came to check on me. It was probably really ten or fifteen minutes. Well I was having contractions every two minutes I still thought I just had a stomach thing going on. This was not real pain, and if this were labor I would KNOW it was labor. That is what every book I read said. "If you aren't sure you are in labor, you probably aren't" I was not sure, and these "contractions" I really didn't think that that was what it was, were not starting every half hour and then every fifteen minutes and then every ten and then every five. That is what was supposed to happen I hadn't had any type of pattern the whole day or week or ever! I had had the practice or braxton hicks contractions I knew what it felt like but this was to fast there was no way, right! Well around one o'clock in the morning my husband convinced me that we should call the Nurse Midwife at LDS hospital to see what she thought, as she was to deliver the baby and all. We did and she very calmly talked to me and said basically that it sounded like I was in labor and that I should head to the hospital when I was ready. I still did not think I was in labor, but at around 2 or 3 Phil said lets go and I was like, ok, so we went. All the way there I just knew that we were going to be sent home with the nurses laughing at us. Nope! We got there and I was six centimeters dilated! I was like what the....... My contractions were coming so fast, it was all so crazy! I didn't need any help for the pain I was fine that way but I was freaked out that I didn't know I was in labor! It was about 3 o'clock when I started seriously pushing to get that baby out, it took two hours or maybe a little bit more. The Midwife kept telling me there were things that they could do to help me out, I had no idea what she was talking about, she was telling me there were meds they could give me for the pain, I still had no idea what she was talking about, what pain? I just wanted that baby out of me, finally after so long of pushing my darling Baby Bear was born, he was a posterior baby which was why he was so hard to push out. The Midwife later told me that she really did not think I would be able to do it. With it being my first baby and all and not really knowing how to push with the right muscles and all. Had I had an epidural, had there been time, I probably would not have been able to.
Well that was baby # 1, baby #2 I thought oh yeah I have been through this I know what to expect I am not afraid of the pain, I will be really close to the hospital...... I was a little scared. My husband was working graveyard shifts so I was alone at night, the most likely time to go into labor, at least that is the way it seems. I was watching not only my own little boy but my nephew as well, what would I do with them if I went into labor in the middle of the day while every one was at work? Phil's family lived a half hour away (we were living in orem, UT at the time) My sister worked a half hour plus away. My Mom and brothers and sisters were practically that far away if they were even home. Plus they didn't have cell phones! They all assured me that they would come and take care of the boys and that it would be fine. What they didn't realize is that although a lot of women labor for 12 and plus hours my labor was expected to be around 3 hours as my first was only 7 and a half and most of that remember was spent pushing the baby out. So in my mind I was thinking I would have one hour to get to the hospital before I would need to start pushing! You would think I would opt to be induced, well choices were not that easy. A couple of weeks before I was due Phil, Bear, and I were moving. Everything was packed and ready to go our lease on our apartment was up on the last day of the month. We had to be out of that apartment! Unfortunately the apartment we were moving into was not yet finished it was almost there but not enough to move in yet. So we loaded all but the necessities into a covered trailer and then went to live in my husbands parents house until we could move into our apartment. The apartment was in Orem, right down the street from the hospital, I was very relieved about that. My in laws house is in Mapleton, almost a half hour from the hospital. I did not I repeat, DID NOT, want to go into labor while staying there. I was not going to be induced, as tempting as it was. So I waited, waited and waited, eleven days later and we were still in my in-laws basement. I was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor and was sharing it with my two year old! I was uncomfortable, my husband was gone all night and slept all day, I did not want to have the baby yet! Well one evening as my Phillip was getting ready to go to work I asked him to stay home with me, just in case. His reasoning was that he couldn't just start staying home from work just in case. I still had at least a week left. Well that night about 3 in the morning I woke-up. Contraction! Bear was sound asleep next to me, I didn't want to wake him up so quietly I rolled off of the air mat, not an easy thing to do when you are huge and pregnant. I tried going to the bathroom, getting a drink of water, laying on my side and relaxing, everything the books say to do if you think you might be in labor as these would help stop contractions if it was false labor. I hadn't had any contractions the whole day, so how could this be labor? I started timing them they were one and a half to two minutes apart, but not exactly the same amount every time. Sometimes they were 2 minutes apart and sometimes they were a minute and forty five seconds apart, so they were erratic, right, this had to be false labor. Well they weren't stopping and I was starting to get worried I called my Mom who was working a graveyard shift at a hospital (she worked in mother baby, not in the hospital I was to deliver at) surely she would know what to do. So I called and she was busy so I was to call back. I called my husband, and said I am having contractions, but then I decided the times weren't consistent enough for it to be labor so I shouldn't be bugging him so I said never mind, hung up and after a few more minutes called my Mom again. I got through to her, told her the situation and she is like hmmmmm, she turned to a nurse she was working with who was a labor and delivery nurse and said what do you think after explaining to her my situation this nurse said "she needs to get her butt to the hospital" Ok now I was scared, I called Phil he didn't answer!!! I tried again and again!! What was going through my head is this: upstairs my father-in-law was sound asleep, he had told me that he would take me to the hospital it I needed him too, I did not want him too! Sorry Richard. I wanted Phil, I needed Phil! My Mother-in-law was also working a graveyard shift so she was not home. There I sat, in absolute terror, my baby was asleep and I didn't want to wake him so I couldn't cry like I wanted to. Finally I got through to Phil, I told him to come home I was in labor and needed to go to the hospital! He said ok I will just finish this last thing and then I am on my way! AAAAAHHHHH! Please hurry! He did hurry he was home in a half hour and ready to take me. Meanwhile I got my things ready and when Phil got there his little brother was awake so I told him to go downstairs and sleep with Bear, so he wouldn't be alone. Good at least I didn't have to worry about who was going to watch him. It was now about 5 am Phil sped to the hospital, we got there and walked in and the ladies at the desk are like, are you here to be induced, because I wasn't kicking and screaming in pain they didn't really believe that I was in labor. The nurses checked and I was five centimeters dialated! They moved me to a real room. At this point I wanted to push, for the freakin life of me I wanted to so bad! The nurses said no not yet. I wasn't fully dialated they didn't want me to tear my cervix, I didn't care, I wanted to push. All they told me was not yet not yet not yet! Where was the doctor was all I kept asking. Then all of the sudden my water broke it was like a huge wave coming out! Where was the doctor! That baby was coming and fast, within minutes he was half born! My doctor walked in just in time to catch my baby! This was all a blur to me, when I remember it, its like I was completely disconnected from my body, very weird! But my Baby Lyon was here and he was healthy and I hadn't died or had the baby at my in-laws house or in the car.......luckily! If I hadn't been able to get through to my Mom that night I probably would not have made it to the hospital in time, I would have probably delivered him myself! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These are some of the reasons why this time I am terrified! Now the situation is far from the same, this time. I have a well established home, even a nursery to bring my baby home to, Phil no longer works graveyard shifts, so I should have no fear. I do though, how do I know what to expect this time? Will my labor be just as fast? Will I have someone to watch my little boys? What if Phil is at work and he it takes him forever to get home? I am constantly trying to make back up plans for just in case this or that, but I cannot make plans for the unknown possibilities! Sure this time I could choose to be induced, but this brings to me a whole new wave of fears and risks! I am so overwhelmed by this, :( All I can really say after all of the above is AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But I also must admit that I do feel a little bit better.