April 14, 2012: The culmination of the most difficult and yet rewarding 35 hours of my life. The moment when we finally got to see our baby girl’s face and hold her in our arms.
If you have read the posts about our birth plan (HERE), you will see that things did not go as we had envisioned. Every step of the way we had to re-evaluate what we believed to be the safest/best route in light of our circumstances. We had to make some difficult decisions and deviate from our plan.
April 13, 3:30am – My water broke! I wasn’t really contracting consistently, so we spent the next couple of hours doing things around the house and making sure we had what we needed for the hospital.
5:30 am – We drove over to the hospital, but then sat in the parking lot for quite a while debating whether or not to go in! We were so torn because we had planned to labor at home as long as possible and I still wasn’t having significant contractions, but we were concerned about the risks associated with premature rupture of membranes.
6:15 am – We finally decided to go ahead and go in to the hospital. They got us all checked in, put in a hep-lock and hooked me up to be monitored for the first 45 minutes. Everything looked good, but when they did an exam I was only dilated to a 2.
We spent the next 12 hours alternating between being monitored for 45 minutes & walking around for 30. The adrenaline and excitement began to fade around mid-morning. My contractions were very inconsistent – getting 3-4 minutes apart for 30-45 minutes and then slowing down and even stopping at times. It was not the quickly-progressing labor I had hoped for.
6:15 pm – After talking to my doctor extensively about where we were at, we decided to go ahead and see if pitocin would help get my contractions going more consistently. I was reassured that we would start the pitocin slowly and give my body time to react before gradually increasing the dose.
This was such a difficult decision because pitocin was one of the key things we had hoped to avoid. However, the reason behind avoiding pitocin was that it could lead to a c-section and we were already headed in that direction anyways.
April 14, 3:00 am – Nearing 24 hours of labor and after almost 9 hours of pitocin, my contractions certainly had become much stronger. As a matter of fact, the contractions became so intense that I could not relax even between them. Even though the contractions had gotten stronger & more painful, they still weren’t consistent. I made good use of a birthing ball, but I was exhausted and overwhelmed. After another exam revealed that I was still only dilated 3 cm, with tears I confided in Kevin that I didn’t think I could make it when it came time to push. He was so encouraging, but I had just reached my limit.
I started asking the nurse about an epidural and told her about my concerns (mainly that an epidural can slow down labor). She shared with me that while that can happen, she had seen an epidural help progress labor just as often. Since my labor still seemed to be stalled there really wasn’t much reason to worry about it slowing down, so I opted to get one. Within an hour of getting the epidural my contractions had evened out and become consistent – I was shocked (and relieved!).
I have to add here that I am so impressed with how my doctor and the nurses respected my birth plan and specifically my wishes that they not offer me pain medication until I asked for it. Once I made the decision on my own to go ahead with an epidural, they expressed relief and explained that they were confident I was headed for a c-section if I hadn’t made that choice.
For the next several hours I slept for 30-45 minutes at a time and then a nurse would come in to “flip” me. Did you know an epidural is subject to gravity? I didn’t. Basically, if I were to lay on my right side too long, that side of my body would be numb, but not the left side, so… I needed to roll from one side to the other periodically (a difficult task when you can’t feel the lower 60% of your body!
9:15am – I was dilated to a 5 & almost 100% thinned… encouraging news after so many hours without any progress!
11:30am – I asked the nurse to check again because I was feeling a lot of pressure and could tell that something had definitely changed. Sure enough, I was at an 8!
12:30pm – I was finally at a 10! We decided to wait another hour before pushing to let Miss Annabelle work her way down a little more on her own.
1:40pm – Time to push! The nurses brought in a mirror and I got the first glimpse of my little girl’s full head of hair. After all the hours and hours of waiting I was so overwhelmed to finally see my girl. Less than an hour of pushing later & I had her in my arms.
2:33pm, April 14, 2012: The culmination of the most difficult and yet rewarding 35 hours of my life. The moment when we finally got to see our baby girl’s face and hold her in our arms.
This birth was challenging to say the least, but I was happy to have such supportive care givers. I look forward to trying for a more natural birth next time!
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