Parents-On the Verge to-Be: How Was That Mad Dash to the Delivery Room?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife and I are awaiting the birth of our first child in less than a month. We have been taking the birthing / prenatal classes at the hospital and have been pleased with the offerings.

We have been told that when contractions begin and that delivery appears imminent that we are to follow the 5-1-1 rule.

That is, we are to wait until contractions are five minutes apart, lasting one minute in duration and have been going on for at least one hour. At that point, we hop into the family hot rod and haul ass to the hospital located about 30 minutes away.

Is this cutting things a bit close?

It has been stressed that we want to avoid showing up when the mother is in false labor which results in an unceremonious dismissal from the hospital and back to the house to await the onset of the real thing. How embarrassing.

Any tales from the field about your experience with this critical window of excitement?

2

Go in when you are comfortable going in. A lot of women prefer to labor at home as much as possible. Me, I wanted the hospital. And labor is different for a lot of women - had I been having one minute long contractions every five minutes, it wouldn’t have been safe for my husband to drive.

We were told some similar rule, plus go in if your water breaks. My water broke at 1 am or something - we had a one year old at home. We called my parents to come get the one year old. Then we called my OBs office. It took them 45 minutes or so to arrive. Then my husband got distracted by talking to my Dad. After several minutes of this my Dad said “are you going to take my daughter to the hospital?” Through all of this the contractions were uncomfortable. In the car they got painful. The hospital was about 30 minutes away and the car ride wasn’t comfortable at all. Plus I’m dripping (we had a towel down on the seat).

We were to the hospital by 4am - I gave birth about 1pm - 12 hours of labor, 9 of it in the hospital.

I’d been in the hospital a few times in the previous weeks due to an infection and toxemia. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show up early - its better than showing up late.

3

Father of three checking in.

With our first son, my wife started getting contractions, etc. in the early morning. They seemed persistent, so we went to the hospital at about 7:30 AM, where they proceeded to strap her down and hook her up to monitors. That virtually stopped the advancement of her labor. Kid didn’t come out until 10:30 PM, and only then because we relented and let them give her some Pitocin. (We are staunch advocates of natural childbirth). So that one was a marathon and a pain in the ass. Coincidentally, our oldest tends to be the last one ready to go somewhere, after much waiting and haranguing…maybe that’s just his way. :smiley:

Having learned our lesson, for our second son, my wife started having contractions around 3 AM, but we waited until they were coming hard and fast before we went to the hospital. We got there around 7:30, and our boy popped right out at about 8 AM. Scha-weet! This one was completely natural (meaning no drugs). Since this was at a hospital in the well-to-do suburbs, there were actually nurses that came in just to see what a natural childbirth was like :rolleyes: . (Most women here follow the slippery slope of Epidural/Pitocin/C-Section or just say “Fuck it, give me a C-Section so I can schedule it around our 2-lawyer household career”).

For our third (our pwecious daughter), my wife decided to have her at home. We simply called our midwife when the time was right, and didn’t have to go to some bloody hospital. I think it took a couple of hours before she was born.
So, in summation, I know it’s your first, so you’re going to be mighty anxious, but do resist the temptation to rush to the hospital too early.

4

The rule is probably a good guideline, but don’t think that it necessarily means the birth is near. I followed it and ended up hanging out with the dads in the waiting room for a loooong time before they saw any real progress. I labored for 18 hours.

5

My wife was 38 weeks along with twins. I came home from work and she was in a bad way. I said “we should go” and that was that. We didn’t want to mess around. I don’t even remember how far apart the contractions were. When we got to the hospital things went from bad to worse, as the placenta started abrubting among other things. I think it all went down within two hours of getting to the hospital. It was crazy but everything turned out fine, although my wife had to spend extra days in recovery. 30 minutes driving under the gun would seem like an eternity.

6

I had short labors (5 and 4 hours). Waiting until contractions are coming five minutes apart, okay; waiting until they last for one minute, okay; waiting until that’s been going on for an hour? That would have been cutting it very close for me. In fact I don’t think I stayed at that level for a full hour either time before getting to All Hell Breaks Loose level, at which point it was better for everyone’s sanity that the midwife was dealing with the situation.

I had some clue my labors were going to be quick, as all the women in my mother’s family have had short labors. Finally those freakin’ peasant hips pay off, is what I say. But I also just had an overwhelming sense of This is it, this is not a dress rehearsal, this is the big night! Call it hormones, because it started early on, before the pains were much worse than those goofy warm-up contractions that happen in the last few weeks.

Anyway, I’d say, use it as a guideline, but if something doesn’t feel right, call the hospital or your doctor and tell them what’s going on. Your wife will be the one with the best overview of the situation, not the hospital staff - she’s the only one going into labor!

7

All three of our kids were delivered within two hours of the first contraction. Labor?, maybe 45 minutes tops. For the second child I was running stop lights because the wife was actually shaking and clenching (trying not to deliver in the car) and her water broke the second she stepped up out of the car. Baby came 30 minutes later, tops, with the nurse still filling out the initial admitting questionaire while the other nurses were prepping for delivery. Her gynocologist never made it to any of the births. One of the children was born before the prep team was assembled (that one was scary) and a nurse basically came running down the hallway and assisted the delivery.
And it ain’t like we waited at home too long for any of them. Contractions start, and so does the car, vvvrrooom!

8

In our case, my wife got up in the night and said, “I think my water broke.” Not much of a choice then – we drove to the hospital.

She actually never felt any contractions at all – the baby went into distress at the slightest contraction, so they had to do a C-section. All worked out.

9

I was two weeks overdue with my son so we had a few mad dashes to the hospital before it finally happened. Women in my family tend to go early and have premature deliveries, so I had my sisters and mother hovering over me and pronouncing imminent delivery from the seventh month on. Hence two trips in thinking it was happening, only to be monitored and sent back home.

I didn’t think it was too embarassing to be mistaken, everyone at the hospital was supportive and understanding, especially as it was my first birth and I was overdue. They always reassured me that they’d rather see me and send me home than that I stay home and wind up in actual labor and something go wrong and I’m not there.

My water broke at home, so the last trip was more relaxed than the ooops trips. I called the OB, my husband ambled out to warm up the car, we alerted the sisters and parents (who beat us there they were so anxious) and calmly drove in. Contractions didn’t really get serious for a few hours after the water broke, but I was just geeked knowing it was finally going to happen.

Go when you feel you need to.

10

Nor does it mean you won’t give birth by the side of the road. One of my coworkers was at work at 9:00 with no contractions when she started to feel something was “wrong” - the baby wasn’t moving. She did not believe she was in labor (it was several weeks early) - she thought she had late term fetal death.

Her husband took her to the hospital - they got there at 10:00 - still no contractions. They got her hooked up to a fetal monitor, found a strong heartbeat - and contractions!

Her baby was born - perfectly healthy - at noon. She had maybe 15 minutes of contractions she could feel before she started pushing - and pushed for all of ten minutes.

11

My first was a scheduled induction, so I’ll skip that.

For my second, I started having contractions about 5 minutes apart at about 11 pm. I took a shower while my husband started calling our list of people to take our older son. NOBODY could do it. Unbelievable. We finally found somewhere to take him and we got on our way. We dropped our son off, then drove the incredibly bumpy (I’d never noticed that) 30 minutes to the hospital, arriving at about 1. We were there a few hours before things started really getting underway. I had my son at 8 am. All women, of course, are different, but for me it was one of those things where you just know it’s time. Plus, there’s no shame in being sent home.

12

Really touch-and-go for our second child - labour commenced more or less exactly on time. I returned home from work one day, looked at the missus and just thought “yep, it’s gonna happen tonight” - and it did. We had to drop our young daughter over to my sister’s house (4 miles in the opposite direction of the hospital) for the night; this went OK, but on the way back, I tried to overtake a car on a straight bit of road and the driver decided to go all junior-enforcer; he moved into the middle of the road and slowed to an absolute crawl for several miles - adding quite a considerable delay to the journey, so my wife was in an advanced state of labour when we arrived at the hospital.

As it turned out, labour was quite prolonged and required assistance with forceps or some similar device.

13

Father of three, but only one dash to the hospital (and even that wasn’t a dash). Our first was delivered by emergency c-section at 32 weeks, about 18 hours after my wife had been admitted to the hospital for pre-eclampsia – and after four months of pre-term labor, including treatment with terbutaline to minimize the contractions, and two stints in the hospital on magnesium sulfate when the contractions became dangerously strong and frequent.

The second time around, my wife knew a lot more about what to expect, and knew that the contractions she started having at about five months, while unpleasant, weren’t a signal of any serious problem (she was under close supervision by her OB/GYN throughout, but she decided she didn’t want to deal with trying to stop the contractions). Despite having had one c-section already, and having been born with structural abnormalities of the uterus, she was determined to try to deliver vaginally if possible. At about a week past full term, the contractions changed to being much stronger and more frequent, albeit still pretty irregular. One night about 11 pm, she told me she was pretty sure she’d need to go to the hospital before too long, but wasn’t ready yet – the frequency of contractions was varying between 4 minutes (occasionally) and 10 minutes, averaging around 8 minutes. She told me to go to bed and get some sleep. About 2 am, she woke me up and said she thought we’d better get our things together and go. My mother-in-law was already staying with us, so we didn’t have to worry about getting someone to stay with our son, but we did take our time getting ready, so that it was about 4 am when we got to the hospital. They put her on a monitor, but couldn’t really figure out what to do with her – the contractions were strong, and averaging between 2 and 3 minutes apart, but still with a wide variance in frequency. Since she wasn’t having any other problems, and the fetal monitor wasn’t showing any problems, they just kept her in the triage area with the monitors going for quite a while. Her regular OB/GYN wasn’t scheduled to come in until 8 am or so, and the other doc in her practice who was on call preferred to wait for him if possible. Just before 8 am, the fetal monitor started showing serious drops in heartrate coinciding with each contraction, which by now were nearly continuous, though still irregular. The tone of the nurses changed pretty quickly, and within a couple of minutes we were in full-blown emergency c-section prep mode. I was hustled out of the triage room and into scrubs while they prepped my wife. By 8:15 they had my daughter out.

Third time was less dramatic – scheduled c-section that went off like clockwork.

14

Drive to the hospital a couple of times to see how long it takes…evening, afternoon, morning rush hour.

If the water breaks, go. With my son, the water broke right off, and I was in the hospital for for 10 hours (fairly quick for the first.) With my daughter, my contractions started out five minutes apart, but I was calmer, so I called my friend (Ivylad was in the Navy), took a shower, went to the bathroom, (I learned *that * one during my son’s birth) got to the hospital and Ivygirl was born five hours later.

The “mad rushes” where the father peels out of the driveway, leaving the wife standing bemusedly on the doorstep, suitcase in hand, are mostly sitcom fodder. You do have some time after the contractions start.

Again, if the water breaks, go directly to the hospital, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Dangerous stuff can happen if the water breaks and the baby isn’t on the way.

15

I agree with the water thing, though I wasn’t aware at the time. My water didn’t break on its own, so I could have waited quite a while at home. Things moved along rather nicely once the OB took care of that for me.

16

I forgot to mention with my daughter, the water didn’t break until right before she was born.

17

With my son, the first, I was too dumb to be too worried about the delivery. And we never had to worry about it anyway as he was born 9 weeks early via emergency c-section. My wife had vague back pain that turned out to be contractions, and her blood pressure was elevated and there was signs of placenta abruption. It all went too fast for us to worry about anything.

Our daughter was a scheduled c-section, it was a piece of cake (well, for me it was :wink: ). It was scheduled for the 41st week and my wife never had any contractions.

So, I have nothing to say about mad dashes to the dellivery room as we never had one. And good luck!

18

For our first child, we had gone through a childbirth class that emphasized how you don’t need to panic when the contractions start, that the early labor can last a long time – a day or more maybe – and that it’s better to stay home where you can be more comfortable and relaxed until the contractions get closer. The videotapes even showed couples hanging out at home playing Scrabble or going for a relaxing walk in the park during the early labor – very peaceful and, the instructors assured, much better than rushing to the hospital at the first sign of contractions.

The golden rule, they said, was to go to the hospital when your contractions are five minutes apart.

So one night my wife wakes me up at midnight and says she’s having contractions. I sit up and think okay, we’ve got plenty of time, no need to panic. We’re just starting that early phase and we’ll be home for a while… I calmly go get my little stop watch and we lie back together on the bed, very calm and relaxed, while I time her contractions. “Now one’s starting…” I hit the stopwatch button and wait. “Now here comes another one…” I look at the stopwatch and my eyes bug out – three minutes! We try it again, and it’s three minutes!

In an instant, I went from calm and composed to oh-my-god-let’s-get-in-the-car. When we got to the hospital, the nurses asked how long she had been having contractions and when we said less than an hour, they all smirked and said they’d probably send us right back home. Then they timed her contractions and said “Let’s get you to a room.”

She had the baby about 8 hours later, with no problem. But for our next kid, I think I’ll just keep the car idling in the garage for nine months, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

19

I woke a few times in the night, just thinking that I was uncomfortable.
Around 3, I realized it was more than just the usual pains I got when I was sleeping. I started timing, and realized the contractions were quite regular (about 6 minutes apart).
I got up and did all the things you are supposed to to make sure it’s “real” labour - drink a couple of big glasses of water, go to the bathroom, move around. By this time the husband had gotten up to see what was wrong. Everything stayed fairly consistent at about 5 minutes apart, and a minute or so long.
I didn’t really want to have to go in through the emergency doors (it being 4 am) so we decided to wait a little. Had some breakfast, had a shower and got to the hospital right when the usual doors opened at 6 am. They were short on rooms, so I wandered the halls for a few hours, and finally got my own room about noon. Baby arrived at 3:39 pm.

20

Watch for a flood of posts - people love to talk about this subject (self included) :slight_smile:

Proud mommy of two girls. Like y’all, I wanted to avoid getting there too early, having to hang around, or worse, getting sent home.

I was l trifle confused about the five minutes apart concept. With my first I’d been having contractions since about breakfast time and by lunch they were five apart - mostly. Some were 4, some 6 or 7. I was thinking they all had to be 5 or less for an hour. Plus, the appliance people were bringing my new fridge and stove that day. Call it nesting or what have you but I wan’t going anywhere until that stuff was installed. Got that taken care of (picture big pregnant lady running to the neighbors to borrow coolers to get food out of old fridge - pregnant lady mopping behind appliance guy as old leaking fridge leaves puddles on its way out of the house - pausing every 5 or so to have a contraction).

My other fear about going too early was that they don’t let you eat anything once you are admitted (I know, I know…) so after appliances were all groovy I sat down with a fat sammich. Well, perhaps it was the food, or the slow down in activity after a very busy morning, but my labor slowed to more like every 6 or 7 mins.

Finally called hubby around 4pm and said “c’mon”. He said something like “but I’m in a meeting” (we’re divorced now). He got home 6ish and I decided to have dinner (I know, I know…) Called the OB when contractions were about 3 mins apart. 30 minute drive to hospital, contractions 1 min. apart on arrival (lots of gripping of the ‘Oh Shit’ on the car door during the ride). Hubby drops me at the door and has to drive to Outer Mongolia to park the car. I wait, and wait for him in the lobby and finally nurse says he can find us upstairs. After about 8 pushes (hubby found us after the 2nd or 3rd) out comes baby with 30 minutes of arrival.

Second baby, I happen to have my weekly OB apt. as I feel first contractions. Doc says I bet if I break your water for you you’ll have the baby in a few hours. He did and I did.

One risk of showing up early - most hospitals have a policy that once you show up, they have to check all the vitals on baby and you every 30 minutes, so that makes walking around a bit of a prob if you want to labor that way instead of trapped in bed. Plus, the longer you are there, the more time they have to sell you all their procedures and drugs (pitocin, epidurals, etc).