I know there are some disadvantages to being so reliant on smart phones, computers, and the internet, but there are plenty of benefits too. When I was in the hospital after giving birth the whole experience was a blur (as you can imagine). So I thought it would be fun to see how much of a labor timeline I could piece together a according to my personal digital paper trail.
Just call me detective Messy Mom!
Here is November 9th, 2015 (the day I went into labor… but didn’t know it until the very end). This is not everything I did, just the stuff I retrieved from my phone and computer.
The first thing on my call log that day is to Once Upon a Child consignment store at 9:50 am. I called them before I dropped a bunch of stuff. Of course I had no idea I was going to have a baby that night. Then I had to worry about about when we would be able to pick it up and get my money (don’t worry it’s been taken care of).
Then I can see that I wrote a blog post where I revealed her name. This is funny to me. The first two sentences of that blog entry are
“Let me just start by saying the baby is not here, but we have a name. Yes, I did say I was going to wait until she was born to reveal the name, but apparently I am not good at waiting. ” Little did I know I would have only had to wait a few more hours. HA!
This is the last line of that blog post
“We should be meeting her soon.” I should have said VERY SOON!
Also, ironically I did a GOOGLE SEARCH about the lack of pre labor activity. I had been having braxton hicks, but that weekend there was almost nothing. I went through my search history and got a screen shot. That’s how little of a warning I had that day that I would be going into labor. This is proof!
Okay, next up I took some photos 6:03 pm like this one of Z’s homework assignment that which was to count the fingers and toes in your family. The cute part is he put two answers, one including the baby (in my belly) and one without. By the time he turned in the assignment we would officially have 120 fingers and toes.
It should say “If baby counted” not conuted
8:30 pm was the last text before going to bed it was to my sister in law and I was making plans for Saturday. I was going to Women’s Brunch at my church and then all the ladies in my family were going to make decorative Bible verses to have all around the room in the birthing center. So that ended up not happening, but it was a nice idea.
Then I went to sleep and woke up with one contraction which I documented in my notes app.
10:41 is when it happened. The rest were recorded on J’s phone.
At 10:49 pm I texted my best friend saying that I couldn’t talk as we had planned because I didn’t feel well. At this point even though yes I did have one contraction I didn’t know that I was in labor. Not at all or I would have definitely told her. It’s funny to look back on now though.
So then we called my parents at 10:58 because I knew at that point something was happening even if it was a false alarm I couldn’t risk waiting any longer.
Then there is this text message to my neighbor at 11:43 because I was panicking about not having to bring the kids with us. It was my last effort to hopefully have her come over and wait for my parents to get there, but she didn’t get the message until the next day so we just left and brought the kids with us.
The never mind was sent 12:06 am so I was texting about 15 minutes before I had my hands on my baby and was delivering her! CRAZY!!!
Here is a screen shot of the contraction timer app
These are not completely accurate because we were calling the hospital and coordinating with my parents and such, but as you can see by my 9th contraction they were coming less than a minute apart (the left side is how long they lasted). It was intense!
The next significant call was at 12:27 when we called the hospital and told them we had had the baby in the car.
Anyway I just got kick out of piecing all of these things together. It confirms that I did not ignore any signs of labor. I just didn’t have them!
As I’ve said before I don’t know when or if the reality of this will really sink in!
This is so cool that you have all these ways to piecemeal the details back together, really fascinating to me actually. I love that you shared this because it really reflects just how normal the day started and how FAST things progressed. And, the fact that you had her in the car? That is really insanity! She is an amazing, blessed, miracle! You too ?
This is so great. I love that you have a little journal of the day. And I’m still blown away that you had your baby in the car.
OMG, I love your record keeping prowess!!! So much can so easily get lost to time.. keep all these momentos!! – http://www.domesticgeekgirl.com
What a great detective you are. It was fun to see you piece it all together.
How neat that you’re able to document all of this! Nothing like when I was in labor!