This post was created in collaboration with Ovia Health, but all of the opinions within are those of The Everymom editorial board.
Two minutes apart, 55 seconds long, one giant sigh of relief. I could barely form a coherent sentence in my mind. All I knew was that the next wave of all consuming pressure would hit me again soon. I had followed the 4-1-1 rule, along with my midwives’ recommendation to leave the house when the contractions were difficult to talk through. But now they were coming faster than expected. I glanced at the GPS on the dash and read 18 minutes until arrival. “Crap, are we going to make i”—oof, another wave.
I clutched my phone and hit the button on the Ovia Pregnancy app’s contraction timer once again. The contraction hit me so hard I couldn’t hold in the guttural groan in the back of my throat. My vision blurred. I white knuckled the door handle as I struggled and failed to find a comfortable position in the god-forsaken car. I had perfected my calm, deep breaths before leaving the house, but now I felt myself losing control.
Finally, the intense, radiating pain subsided. I tapped the contraction timer and read the new log: 50 seconds long, 1 minute and 40 seconds apart. My husband and I glanced at each other. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. His foot pushed harder on the gas, and I sent up a silent prayer to whoever was kind enough to listen. I really did not want to push a baby out on the side of a highway.
Graphics: Aryana Johnson
How It All Began
Spoiler alert: I did not end up having my little girl on the side of the road that night. However, we barely made it to the hospital with only 40 minutes to spare. And I wholeheartedly believe that if I had not been diligently tracking my contractions with the Ovia Pregnancy app since earlier that afternoon, we would not have made it in time.
You may be wondering how I could place such high faith in one app, but the Ovia Health apps have had my back since day one. It all started over three years ago when my husband and I came up with the brilliant idea to create our first tiny human from scratch. But trying to conceive takes more planning than most would think. I downloaded Ovia in order to track my cycles and we were gratefully pregnant within two months. I understand that TTC is different for every couple, but being able to stay in tune with my body and understand my fertile windows helped us a lot in the process.
Growing With Ovia
Once I discovered that we were pregnant with our first LO, I again turned to Ovia to keep me informed and educated about my growing body and baby. I graduated to Ovia Pregnancy and the app showed me his size and shape and let me log my symptoms every week. This helped me keep track of any questions I had for my upcoming prenatal appointments (and there were plenty of questions that first pregnancy). The calendar feature allows you to see your gestational weeks throughout each month. I found that super helpful when planning events throughout both my pregnancies.
Graphics: Aryana Johnson
41 weeks and two days of growing our Theo, and he finally arrived in July 2020 after an arduous 24 hour induction process. But my journey wasn’t over with Ovia. Ovia Parenting was there to hold my hand through all the unknowns of being a first-time mom. I was able to track his feedings, diaper changes, and naps in one app. All of their apps are also partner sharing friendly so your significant other can connect their account to yours and log information as well. Ovia Parenting had great resources about baby milestones and easily answered so many of my questions.
It’s no wonder that when I became pregnant again right after our son’s first birthday, Ovia Pregnancy was the very first app I re-downloaded. Even though I had just done it, I was eager to return to a familiar and trusted resource for my second pregnancy. This time around I got to use a brand new-to-me feature: the contraction timer. Since I had to be induced with Theo, this would be my first time experiencing spontaneous labor. I had no idea what to expect or how the trip to the hospital would go. But after a week of prodromal labor, and half a day of inconsistent contractions, I did not expect for the last stage of labor to progress so dang quick.
Graphics: Aryana Johnson
Back to the Beginning
So, let’s return to the original scene (as I’m sure you’re dying to know). As I just mentioned, my contractions that day had been strong but far apart. However, things began to pick up after a few laps around Target around 5 p.m. By the time we headed home, had dinner, and put our son to bed at 7 p.m., my contractions were consistently 6-8 minutes apart.
I labored in our room for the next five or so hours and timed each of them in the Ovia Pregnancy app. By midnight, they were about four minutes apart and one minute long. I was also struggling to speak through them so this felt like a good time to head out. However, I did not take into consideration that my body had just done this only 20 months prior. Let’s just say that things were locked, loaded, and ready to go. Cue the 30 minute car ride from hell.
We arrived at the hospital at 1 a.m. The triage nurse checked my dilation (hello 8cm!) at around 1:15 a.m. and quite literally ran my wheelchair to a delivery room as I wailed and cursed the entire way. No time to change into a delivery gown—forget about an epidural even if I had wanted one. My water broke 10 minutes later, and after 15 minutes of pushing, Sofia was born at 1:40 a.m. It was an exhausting and incredible whirlwind of a birth. A birth that thankfully happened within the safety of our hospital. Moral of the story: track those contractions mamas and you too can narrowly avoid pushing out a human in the passenger’s side of a Hyundai Elantra.
This post was created in collaboration with Ovia Health, but all of the opinions within are those of The Everymom editorial board. We only recommend brands we genuinely love.
