Labor & Delivery

Ok, so I guess it's about time to give the gritty details on how the labor and delivery went down. Obviously I've been a little busy lately and haven't gotten around to posting, so here it is...

I went into labor Saturday the 15th at about 9 pm, and had contractions that were about 20 min apart all night long, they picked up to 15-10 min, then back up to about 20, back and forth. Then then slowed down at about 3 pm on Sunday to about 1 an hour, so I thought maybe it wasn't going to happen. Then at midnight they picked up again and were every 15 min all night long-needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. Monday I called the hospital at 10 am and explained what was going on, and said that I was supposed to come in to get some gel to help move me along, but the nurse suggested I wait a few hours and call her back. When I called back she put me on hold, only to come back and say that I was a difficult case and they didn't know what to do with me (that really instills a lot of confidence), we decided that I would wait it out and see how the day progressed. Well, the contractions picked up and by around 7 pm they got to about 6, 4, 3 min apart. We decided at that time that since we live so far away, that it was best to start making our way to the hospital.

So we arrived at 9 pm, 48 hours since I had been contracting and got to a room right away. Up till this point, I had never really wanted to commit to an epidural, I thought that I knew pain, and I thought that I had a high tolerance for pain. However, I had never had someone punch their fist into my stomach, grab my intestines, twist, and then pull them out. It hurts, and there is no need to be a hero. So within an hour of being there, they had the needle in my back and I was on easy street-and loving it! Truly though, I was so exhausted, physically and mentally, that I don't think I would have been able to make it through. It was a lifesaver.

The nurses kept coming in every hour and checking me, but truly I wasn't making any progress, so after a few hours they broke my water, hoping that would move things along. Well, that didn't work, so they gave me a dose of Petosin, I dilated a few more, but not enough, I believe then I got another dose of Pet., but still not progressing how they wanted. By this point, they started to say how the baby was now getting a little stressed in there, his head was very low and since there was no fluid in there to float him, he was getting a little squished and he didn't seem to like that. So they then filled me back up with fluids, to take the pressure off the baby. They checked back in a little bit and he was doing much better. A little while later I was fully dilated and it was time to go. At this point I had been in the hospital for 12 hours and it was 60 hours since I had started contractions.