After a night of little to no sleep on Sunday, May 4, it was finally 4:30 am, time to wake up and get ready to head to the hospital for my 7 am induction. I made myself a couple scrambled eggs and forced them down, along with a glass of orange juice. I wasn’t hungry but knew I would need some energy for the day. We finished getting ready, packed up the car, and left the house at 6 am.On our way to the hospital, we stopped at Panera Bread to pick up a dozen bagels for the nursing staff. When we checked in, they all definitely appreciated it! Doctor Rovner (my OB) was there when we checked in, and said hi to me. He said that I know the way to get on the nurses’ good side. They didn’t have my room ready for me quite yet, so we had to wait about 10-15 minutes in the waiting room. My nurse, Crisha, came out to get me and got us all set up in the room. She thanked me for the bagels and said all the other nurses were jealous that I was her patient!
It didn’t take long and we were underway. First she got my IV started. During this process I had a few contractions, but to me they were just the usual “Braxton Hicks” contractions and I didn’t think much of them. Getting the IV was not fun. Crisha did a great job, and got everything right on the first try, but it just was not a pleasant experience! At 7:40 am, we began the pitocin drip. We started at 2 units, and she told me they would raise the level by 2 every 20 minutes. My initial exam revealed that I was dilated 1-2 cm, 50% effaced, and the baby was at -2 station.The Blairs were with us at the hospital from the beginning, and my parents arrived at 9:30. My mom said she wore a pink sweater for Kate, and blue jeans and a blue necklace for Noah. Shortly after, Crisha came back in to check on me. My contractions are every 3-5 minutes, but I’m not feeling any pain. I was starting to get worried because all I am feeling are the familiar Braxton Hicks contractions. My pitocin drip was up to 10 units. The baby was responding well to the pitocin and contractions, which I was thankful for, I was afraid the baby wouldn’t tolerate them well.
By 11:10 am, my pitocin drip was at 16. I was still not in any pain, contractions every 1-3 minutes. At that point, they said there was no need to increase my dosage of pitocin because everything is going well. Later that hour, it started raining! Very appropriate for me. I enjoyed watching it rain out the window.
Around noon, Crisha wanted me to lay on my side to put more pressure on my cervix. We were all a little concerned that I was having no pain at all, she hadn’t checked me since check-in, so we had no idea if I was making any progress.At 12:30, Doctor Rovner came over to check on me. When he came in, he asked “How are you feeling?” I answered “Good!” He said, “We don’t want you to feel good!” ha! He told them to get the hook ready to break my water in case I was ready for it. He checked me and I was 3-4 cm, and easily stretchable. So, he went ahead and broke my water! I don’t know what I was expecting, but it didn’t hurt at all, and it was a very weird sensation! It sounded like a river gushing out! It was the weirdest thing.
Almost immediately, pain began to accompany the contractions. I told my nurse, and she went ahead and ordered my epidural. I was told it would be about 30 minutes. The pain wasn’t unbearable or anything, I talked to my sister through a few of the contractions, but it gave me a small appreciation of what “natural labor” moms go through! Crisha said from this point we can expect / hope for progression of 1 cm per hour, we’d hopefully be pushing around 7 pm! Thankfully, the anesthesiologist (Larry Stephens, he made QUITE sure I knew his name by the end of it all..) arrived no more than 10-15 minutes later. Of the entire birth process, getting the epidural was the one thing I was THE most scared of. I shouldn’t have been! He asked me how I was feeling and I answered “Scared!” He said, “So am I!” HAH! That got quite a laugh out of me, and put me at ease a bit. He talked me through the procedure, which was SO not a big deal! Seriously, it hurt way less than getting my IV put in. I really didn’t feel anything. The only scary part about the epidural is how they had me sitting on the edge of the bed, with my back hunched over. Crisha was watching the baby’s heartbeat through the procedure, as it went down, down, down, down. Towards the end she told Larry that he really needs to hurry up because the baby’s heartbeat was down below 100, and continuing to fall. He said that he was almost done, and within 15 seconds they had me sitting upright, and baby’s heartbeat immediately jumped back up where it needed to be. Whew. Deep breath.
The only immediate side effect I had from the epidural was itchiness. I figured I had enough practice of that through the pregnancy!
At 1:15 pm, I was 5 cm, 70% effaced, and the baby was at -1 station. They backed the pitocin off to 14.
At 2:15 pm, the baby’s heartbeat was not giving the accelerations they like to see. (Story of our life!!) So they put me on Oxygen. They told me if we didn’t get some good accelerations, they would have to turn down the pitocin and hope that labor continues to progress without it.
Around 2:30 pm, I started to have a LOT of bladder discomfort with each contraction, even though I had a catheter in. I don’t know what that was all about. They told me to push my epidural boost button every time I had that sensation.
At 3:00 pm, I was dilated to 8 cm! I was still having immense bladder discomfort with every contraction, and they checked how many times I had pressed the button for extra pain medication – they said it was enough that they can get the anesthesiologist in for a more powerful boost. She came in and gave me a shot of something through the epidural… Bless that woman. It took all of that pain and discomfort away. At some point after my epidural, I don’t remember when, but I developed another one of the side effects – shaking. It was really annoying. I wasn’t really uncomfortable or in pain or anything, just shaking uncontrollably. It would come and go sometimes, and I could get it under control if I really concentrated on breathing deeply and slowly. Jeff said he didn’t like seeing me shake like that. I told him, “I promise you, you’d rather see me like this than if I didn’t have any medication.”
At 3:35 pm, I was complete at 10 cm! Wow, that went fast. The baby was still pretty high, so they wanted to try to let it “labor down” for a while. They gave me 30 minutes to let things happen naturally, and see where to go from there. I started crying, I think I was nervous, anxious, overwhelmed… I don’t know, really. I think I was expecting everything to take a lot longer than it was, and everything was just moving so quickly. I was scared of pushing, and just “the unknown.”
At 4:00, Crisha spoke with Doctor Rovner and he told them to give me another 30 minutes. They wanted to wait for the baby’s head to go from 0 station to +2 station. They said hopefully I’d only have to push about 30 minutes if we continue to let the head come down on its own. The shaking from the epidural had me so tense, I kept clenching my jaw. My jaw muscles were so tired, but it was almost involuntary. During this time I was starting to feel a lot of lower pressure as the baby worked its way down.
At 4:17 I’m feeling the urge to push. Won’t be long now!
At 4:30 the nurses came in and kicked the family out. By 4:40 they had me pushing. Jeff was a wonderful coach and talked me through each contraction. I really didn’t feel like anything was happening with all the pushing. Maybe nothing was happening, because they told me to try to change the way I was pushing. In all the movies you see, you curl up into a ball, put your chin to your chest and push. They told me to bury my head as far back into the bed as I could, and push. As soon as I started doing that, they told me it was working very well. We get 30 minutes into pushing and I remember thinking “Ok, you said this would be all it takes!” But we kept going. They told me they could see hair with each push!! I asked what color it was! She said she thinks it was brown, but couldn’t tell for sure. Somewhere in this point Crisha checked me and said she thinks the baby is facing sideways and up, but wanted a second opinion. I asked her what that meant, and she said that it would mean longer and harder pushing. Another nurse came in and confirmed it. She said I was going to have to start pushing harder because the baby was retreating back upwards between contractions, and we needed to make more permanent downward progress.
Doctor Rovner came back around 5:15 or so. I don’t remember a whole lot during the second half of the pushing phase. I was getting really exhausted – they had me pushing 4 times with each contraction. I almost felt like I was going to pass out a couple times, but in between contractions I just kept breathing through the oxygen mask. I was just pushing with everything I had, Doctor Rovner was very supportive and told me I could do it. I remember hearing him say that I was tearing pretty badly and he was going to cut an episiotomy. I really didn’t want to have one, but at that point I didn’t care. I knew we were sort of in trouble and this baby was not going to come out easily. (I felt a little bit of the cuts… ouch!) We pushed some more, and I still really didn’t feel like a lot was happening, but I did feel a LOT of pressure. At some point I developed a fever, and the baby’s heartbeat was starting to get dangerously high. Doctor Rovner told me that we HAD to get the baby out in the next set of pushes. He asked for the vacuum extractor, and got it ready. I gave it every last bit I had with the next contraction. I honestly don’t remember most of it. But I do remember the feeling of the head being out. THAT was weird! I could hear them suctioning out baby’s mouth. They told Jeff to look down, that the head was out! Someone said “We’ll know if it’s a boy or girl in just a minute!” Doctor Rovner told me to push, and once again I gave it all I had. He told me to ease up a bit, push gently, gently, then all of a sudden the baby was OUT. 5:40 pm. It was the most dramatic feeling of physical relief I’ve ever felt. Doctor Rovner said, “IT’S A GIRL!!!!!” and placed her on my belly. I started bawling. I couldn’t believe it. A little girl. I touched her head a minute and said hi to her… Jeff went and cut her cord. They took her over to the warming table to clean her up and watch her vitals. When they announced her weight, 8 pounds 6 ounces, we were SHOCKED! We were expecting a petite little 7 pounder! That goes to show how wrong ultrasound measurements can be!
(Look at her poor little vaccuum head!)
I was in a state of semi-consciousness on the bed while they worked on me (and Kate). I heard Doctor Rovner assessing the “damage” and I heard him say something about a third degree sidewall tear, to which he added “Which I need to fix RIGHT NOW.” Apparently I was losing a lot of blood. I was just lying on the table, shaking uncontrollably, just trying to breathe deeply and get it under control. I remember thinking that if he’s stitching things up down there, I’m probably making it a little harder on him by shaking like this! Jeff had gone over to be with Kate. She had a 100.4 degree fever, and her heart rate was 179. I thought I remembered hearing one of the nurses say she was working a little hard to breathe. After they had her somewhat stabilized, they brought her over to me to hold for a minute, but explained they needed to take her to the newborn nursery for further monitoring and stabilization. They assured me that everything was going to be fine, she just needed some extra attention to be totally safe. They took our first family picture!
Jeff kissed me goodbye and went to be with Kate. It was close to an hour before they were done working on me. I cried for a while, I think it was just overwhelming and I was in there all alone, being sewn up, my husband and baby were gone, and I’m sure just hormones overall.
After a bit my parents got to come in and be with me. My mom brought me a present – an adorable white & purple dress with matching sweater and booties. She said she was so sure it would be a girl that she hadn’t even bought a boy present!
The nursery kept Kate for what seemed like forever. I finally got moved over to my post-partum room, and they brought Kate in around 10:30 or so. It had been almost 5 hours since she was born. That was the first time I had really gotten to see her. I just held her and took it all in. It was a very overwhelming experience.
They left my epidural in overnight because of the damage done during delivery. They promised me I’d be a lot more comfortable if they left it in. My fever also continued through much of the night, but had returned to normal by the next morning.
Looking back, I had an incredibly easy labor. I’d take that anyday! I was scared to death to induce, but it was by far the right choice for me. My doctor said that if she had been any bigger, it would have ended in a c-section. Crisha, my L&D nurse, just had a baby in January. She said it was the exact same situation with her daughter - facing up and sideways… Only her baby was 8 pounds 7 ounces. Their delivery ended in a c-section, so she was very impressed that I delivered Kate! My due date isn’t for another two days… And my original induction date I reluctantly took (I really didn’t want to induce for fear of ending in c/s) was for May 12! Doctor Rovner said that if we had waited any longer, I wouldn’t have been able to deliver her. He also said that if she had been facing the right way, she would have come out after 20 minutes of pushing. THANKS a lot Kate!
What a whirlwind we’ve been through in the last few days. Kate is amazing. She changes every day, and the amount of love I have for her is just overwhelming. Even when I’m exhausted I can’t wait to hold her and just look at my little miracle.
