my birth story: part 1

One of the good things about having a C-section:  I have a ton of help from nurses (and grandparents) the next few days that I can actually write our birth story.  It’s really not all THAT exciting, but I’m sure after all my talk about having a natural childbirth, you’re wondering how I ended up with a C-section.

One last Baby Bump shot, right before going to the hospital.

We went in to the hospital for our induction at 2 PM on Monday afternoon.  After taking my vitals, drawing blood, and checking my cervix, we finally got cervidil started around 3:15.  I was only dilated to about 1 cm and still only 40% effaced.  Cerividil is used to help ripen the cervix but can sometimes put women into labor, which is what we were hopeful for.  It has to stay in for 12 hours unless labor is progressing.  Our plan was to leave it in, check my cervix again around 3:15 AM, and if I had progressed, they would go ahead and start pitocin.  If not, they would do another round of cervidil.  So, you can understand why we were hoping cervidil would at least do something.

My parents came and brought us some pizza and hung out until it was time to go to bed.  I was having some contractions, but most of the time, I didn’t even realize I was having them unless I looked at the monitor.  They just weren’t very painful – some tightening, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  They gave me some Ambien to sleep, and sleep I did.

…Until around 1:30 AM, when I woke up with contractions that were much harder to handle.  Matt woke up and helped me through the contractions, but they were much more difficult that I could ever imagine.  At that time they were about 5 or 6 minutes apart, so I was getting hopeful that there was some progress happening.  At 2 AM, the nurse came and checked me – I was only dilated to 2 cm, but was 90% effaced.  Since I had made some progress, they decided it was time to start an IV and start pitocin.

I went in still hoping I could have a natural childbirth, but I knew that pitocin would make it really hard, and my contractions were already very difficult to begin with.  So, I went ahead and got an epidural.  Of course, it took about an hour before the anesthesiologist came in, so I had about an hour of very painful contractions before I finally got any relief around 3:30 AM.  I never thought I’d say this, but I am very happy I chose to get the epidural.  I don’t think I would’ve been able to relax had I not gotten it, and that would have made for a very long + painful labor.  Little did I know at the time, I wouldn’t be in labor much longer.

After I got some much needed relief from the epidural, we laid back down but our minds were racing with everything going on.  Matt + I religiously watched the monitor, looking at my contractions along with the baby’s heart rate.  After about 5 contractions, the nurse came back in, worried about some of the decelerations in the baby’s heart rate after each contraction.  She said during a contraction is fine, but since these were happening after my contractions, she put me on oxygen to make sure the baby was getting enough oxygen, which seemed to make everything return to normal.

About an hour later, my nurse came back to check my cervix again.  I was still only 90% effaced, but was dilated to 3 cm.  However, when she went to check, she could tell baby’s head was down, but her head wasn’t what was coming out first.  She went and grabbed an ultrasound machine to see if she could tell if it was her hand or elbow or something, but the ultrasound didn’t reveal anything.  So, another nurse came in to check, but they still weren’t sure, so in came the OB that was on call that night.

Nope, it wasn’t a hand or elbow…

I’ll have Part 2 tomorrow.  I gotta leave you hanging a little bit…