2:42am

It was early on a Monday morning. Our bedroom was dark, with just a pinch of moonlight showing through our open window. I could see the outline of my husband turned towards the nightstand. The sounds of the fan and the noisemaker from our registry were permeating the cool air. A soft breeze was blowing through the room. Yet despite all of this, I could still hear my husband and my dog snoring. 

​My mind was racing, as it typically did every night of my pregnancy. 36 weeks now. Being wide awake was something I had become accustomed to; it was as if my body was getting me used to the months that would ensue. I sighed internally. Perhaps externally as well, though I can't remember that. Pushing the covers aside, I slowly inched one leg over the side of the bed, and then the other. I grunted as I pushed myself up to a seated position. I was about to utilize both of my strategies for pregnancy insomnia: eat and pee. A full stomach and an empty bladder somehow always seemed to do the trick.

I made my way into the kitchen—a short walk in our tiny place, yet somehow I'm still out of breath. 2:18am says the clock on the microwave. I turn on the stove light and begin to fix myself a bowl of cereal. Captain Crunch, this time. I sit, munching away, thinking about what I had on my work calendar for the Monday ahead. Thinking how long will it be before my ankles become balloon-like and I have to excuse myself to elevate my feet. I'd been wearing what my sister-in-law so lovingly deemed "water shoes" for the third trimester of pregnancy. They happened to be a very practical, inexpensive, and fairly benign style of Skechers slip-ons I found on Amazon. 

Once the last of the cereal was gone from my bowl, I placed it in the sink. I was too lazy to clean the dish—telling myself I'd clean it when I woke back up. It was time for my final stop on my way back to bed: the bathroom. Again, a very short walk which left me disproportionately out of breath. I sat down on the cold toilet seat and squeezed out every last drop I could. I wanted to ensure my bladder did not wake me up for the rest of the night. Somehow, it was a very un-satisfyingly low amount of urine which produced such an urgency that I had to go.

Mission complete. Time to go back to bed and try to clock a few more hours of shuteye before tackling the day. It was always a challenge to get back in to bed. I turned around to face the dresser, pushed both arms into the bed and lifted myself back up. At that very moment, a rush of warm water ran down my legs. I panicked, of course. 

"I just peed, dammit! What could this be?!" I thought to myself. Within seconds I knew immediately what this was. My mind immediately went to "But it's too early..."

I did the only thing that came naturally to me in that moment: I screamed. The loudest, perhaps, that I had ever screamed. My husband sprung into action. He jumped onto the bed on all fours.

"What!?" he exclaimed, "What happened?"

"My water broke," I sobbed. By now, our poor dog was awake and just as anxious, if not more so, than I was. She came over to me and sniffed. Ew.

My husband looked at the clock. 2:42am. It was go-time.

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Snapshot".