Life
When someone's water breaks in the movies, it's always a strong gush of clear liquid, which inevitably soaks the ground at the feet of your boss, a store clerk, or your partner, in some hilarious way. So much drama. In reality, sometimes your water breaks early, and sometimes it doesn't break until your baby is born. Sometimes it feels like you peed yourself and sometimes it feels like a slow leak that you're positive is just pee. There are quite a few things my water breaking felt like, some completely unexpected.
The first time my water broke, I was completely shocked. I was five days past my daughter's due date and had been admitted for induction of labor. The party hadn't started yet, and I was so scared and anxious about it, that I kept pacing the room. I went to the bathroom, because I thought I had to pee, and my water broke like a waterfall all over the bathroom floor. Of course, the nurses weren't sure that it wasn't pee, so they sent a sample of my puddle to the lab. Sure enough, my water had broken. Honestly, I could have told them that, because it felt nothing like peeing. Plus, once it started, I couldn't stop.
For the next two labor and deliveries, I was induced and my provider ruptured my membranes to get labor started. The first time I was induced, fluid shot out of me like a canon, and then like a squirt gun, which shot fluid out of my vagina in little bursts with each painful contractions. The second felt like a warm lazy river, proving once again, that few things in pregnancy, labor, or life, are like they are in the movies.
Like A Water Balloon Popping
Every time, I heard a popping sound and felt my water break, like a giant water balloon.
Like I Peed Myself
When my water broke the first time, I thought I had to pee, so I logically thought I had peed all over the bathroom floor. The nurses thought so, too. We were wrong.
Like Niagara Falls
I don't know why I thought I had peed. There was so much fluid. I wasn't sure how it was possible.
Like A Dam Breaking
It came all at once. Once my membranes ruptured and nothing was holding back a massive amount of fluid, it gushed all over the floor, just like in the movies, but with more uncertainty and embarrassment. It was pretty epic.
Like WTF Just Happened?
When my water broke the first time, it totally took me by surprise. I had no idea what was happening. I called the nurse, only to have her question whether or not I had peed on the floor. Ummm, no. I don't think my body can hold that much pee, and one generally doesn't hear a pop when it happens.
Like I Was Being Squeezed By A Vice
When my midwife broke my water for my second birth, I immediately had an intense contraction that was so much worse than the ones I had had before. I may have muttered some unkind words in her direction after I stopped screaming. Why didn't she warn me?
Like A Sprinkler
When she ruptured my membranes to get things started, my water came out with a burst that actually hit her in the face. It was a little satisfying when I think about how horribly she treated me during labor.
Like My Vagina Was Spitting
After the flow slowed, it came out in little bursts with every contraction. So freaking weird.
Like A Warm Lazy River
This last time I gave birth, my OB-GYN broke my water after my epidural, it started slow, like a warm, lazy river, and lasted forever. My husband even took a video. I really hope it doesn't end up on YouTube, 'cause that would be embarrassing.
