I don’t get embarrassed very easily.  If I fall on my face, I can just laugh.  If my zipper is down, no biggie.  It happens to everyone.  When my kids act like hooligans in public, I remember that every mom has been there.  There really aren’t too many truly embarrassing things that I can remember.  But lately I’ve been remembering one embarrassing moment…and even though it was sort of embarrassing, I can still brush it off, and I even think it’s a little bit funny.

Let’s go back to early March, 2005.  I was about 38 weeks pregnant with Logan.  I remember I was wearing my red work out pants and a t-shirt and I was doing the dishes in the .  Suddenly, I was leaking fluid all over the place.  “Derek!  Derek!  Oh! oh!  My water is breaking!”

I was so excited.  I immediately called my mom to tell her the exciting news.  I started packing my stuff for the hospital, and called my friend Chelsea to come over and sit at the apartment with Connor while he slept.  I kept waiting for the contractions to start, but they really weren’t strong. But I just knew my water had broken, even though my mom was skeptical.  With Connor, once my water broke, things progressed pretty quickly.  So she was surprised that nothing was happening an hour after the event.  Looking back, this was definitely one of those times when I should have listened to my mom.  Even Derek brought up the possibility that maybe it wasn’t my water.  No way!  It’s not like I hadn’t given birth before.  I just knew my water had broken!

Derek and I headed into the hospital.  “My water broke about an hour ago,” I announced quite proudly to the nurse.  I got checked in and hooked up to the monitors.  The L&D nurse came in to to check for amniotic fluid.

The test was negative.

She tested again.  Still negative.  I was having some contractions, but nothing major.  I think I was maybe 2 or 3 centimeters.

She tested one last time.  Still negative for amniotic fluid.  I started to get a little suspicious since I hadn’t had any more leakage since the flood at the sink.  And the contractions were not there.  Derek’s words kept coming back to me…”Meg, I really think this might be pee, not water…”

Two or three hours later, we headed home from the hospital.   As it turns out, I was just a big, fat pants-wetter.  I peed all over myself.  Not just a little dribble like when jumping on a trampoline.  Not even like at camp (or the other times) when I laughed so hard I peed on myself but I knew what was happening.  It was completely uncontrollable, and not only that, it took a doctor and a nurse to convince me that was what had happened.

It was definitely not one of my finer moments.

The whole reason I’ve been thinking about this is because I really want my water to break at home this time.  With both of boys, it broke in the hospital, and for some reason this time, I just really want it to break at home.  It just seems so exciting and so definite when it happens that way.  If it does happen at home, I will be checking and double checking that it is actually amniotic fluid, and not just me being a big dork who pees on herself.

I’m cool with being a dork.  Just not a dork who pees on herself without knowing. 🙂