Monday
Today my OB/GYN doctor, Victoria Mancuso, is on-call at the Kaiser hospital where I am due to give birth. She informed me in advance that if I were to go into labor on the day she was on-call, she would personally deliver my baby rather than a midwife.
Like most days leading up to my birth, my parents did close to nothing but sit at home and stare at the walls, waiting for the next signs of my impending labor. I, on the other hand, wanted to stay active so I suggested a trip to Barnes and Noble where we could all read to our liking. We spent several hours at the Cafe. I picked up the Brooke Shields book, "Down Came the Rain" which describes her journey through post-partum depression. My mother, father and I were awaiting my husband, Jin, to join us after work for dinner. Once he arrived, we decided to try a nearby restaurant. But before we could leave, at exactly 7pm, I felt a subtle yet distinctive sensation of moisture, as if my water had broken.
I had been warned in our child-birth preparation course that when your water breaks, it is seldom the huge rush of water splashing all over your new Manolo Blahniks (like in Sex and the City). But rather, it's a slight trickle of water that continues like a stream. My experience was hardly that. I quickly ran to the bathroom but found that the sensation had stopped. Was it my water breaking or was it my mind trying to "will" the induction of labor? I went back to the Cafe to my anxious family only to report that perhaps it was a false alarm. We decided to proceed to dinner.
Once at the Japanese restaurant, I felt the strange feeling again and decided it was prudent to call the hospital for advice. The nurse calmly suggested I go home, take a shower, pack my bags, and come to the hospital where they would check if my bag had indeed broken. So that's what we did. We ordered dinner, went home, I took a shower while Jin took a luxurious bubble bath, and 3 hours later, I arrived at the hospital.
10:30pm
After checking in at the triage desk, I was escorted to a separate room where the nurses hooked me up to the fetal monitor. A doctor eventually came in to examine me and to take a small sample of my womanly juices to see if they could detect amniotic fluid.
11:20pm
The doctor returned to report that she could not find amniotic fluid. By this time, I was leaking more profusely so I asked that she take another sample to confirm. This time, she returned quickly to report that my water had broken and that I was going to have a baby!


Jin and I pose for a final picture before 2 become 3!

I was given two options: 1) I could be induced immediately with Pitocin, a synthetic form of oxytocin, which induces uterine contractions, or 2) I could wait until morning for induction in hopes that my body would begin contractions naturally. I elected to wait until morning, partly because I had heard horror stories about the intensity of Pitocin-induced contractions but also because I wanted to give my body a chance to start contractions without medicine.