The photo above was taken on June 15, 2017 at 8:29 a.m.

On June 14, 2017, around 8 p.m., I was at the hospital doing a Mock Code.

We’re required to do it once a year. In addition to knowing how to do CPR, which is a separate training, the Mock Code teaches us how to work together as a team during a code in a hospital setting. Knowing how to work with others and the sequence of events for emergency situations is essential for hospital workers.

I enjoy much of my nursing continuing education, because it makes sense. So much of our educational career, we are doing things and learning things that feel pointless and disconnected from our real lives. Almost all the training and education I do for my nursing career at the hospital feels important and necessary.

I need to know how to use the equipment. I need to remember the skills we use regularly to treat our patient population. And like I mentioned, automation is the key to success in emergent situations.

The thing that was different about this Mock Code is that at the time, I was nine months pregnant. At nine months pregnant, there is no more glowing beauty. There is the continuous preparation for and anticipation of birth. You are mentally done with incubating. Even with your first kid, you have some sense of the powerful process that will bring that baby earthside. It’s all you can think about. That, and how enormous you are.

In my case, I had six births under my belt. In some ways, that made the wait harder since I knew things don’t necessarily get progressively easier. But, thank God for the way this works, I didn’t care how it needed to happen, nor was I very interested in relaxing and enjoying my last days of pregnancy before that phase of my life was over. I was just done.

I wanted the Mock Code taken care of before maternity leave. Maybe, I thought, if I got my education done, the baby would come.

So I went. It was warm. I remember jumping up on the hospital bed, surrounded by the code team I was training with, and pounding chest compressions into the dummy with power and gusto, my name badge swaying to the rhythm. I let all my feelings about still being pregnant into my enthusiasm for keeping this pretend patient alive.

My instructor was surprised when she found out the baby was fully cooked.

Before I left the hospital, I slid documentation of my Mock Code under my manager’s door. I headed home around nine that night, feeling victorious. But also, a little defeated. Because I was still pregnant, and there was no sign that would be changing any time soon.

The next morning at five a.m., I woke up and felt a gush. Nothing else would happen for a couple of hours – I was still cleaning the house, doing laundry, and otherwise nesting long after 8 a.m. There were some contractions from time to time starting around 7, but nothing serious enough to interfere with my cleaning.

By nine, I was starting to retreat so I could concentrate. That didn’t stop me from scrubbing the tub before I filled it with water to relax into labor there for a bit.

In the tub, the contractions were totally manageable, and I had room to do some real mental work, asking my body to do what it needed to to get the baby out. I focused single-mindedly on imagining my body yawning open so the baby could come down and out.

My midwife had arrived a little earlier in anticipation of a fast birth, but had left me alone in the bathroom. Not long after, she came in to see how I was doing. It was 9:19 a.m. I asked her to move her phone, which was lying face up on the floor outside of the tub, so I could stop my logical brain from being consumed with the passage of time. I needed my Cave Woman Brain 100% on. It was at that time that the relaxed phase of things was over.

I was a little caught off guard at how fast the tub stopped working for me. With my last birth, I’d gotten a good hour and a half of laboring and coping really well in the tub. I think this time, I got 2o minutes . Then, I was back out, desperately trying to cope with the intensity and disbelieving my midwife as she told me I was nearly finished.

I was holding Seven in my arms by 9:45 a.m. My midwife later told me it was 25 mins. from the time I started moaning through contractions until Seven was born. It was a little over 12 hours after had I finished my mock code, when was sure I would be pregnant forever.