Warning: don't read if you don't want to hear graphic birthing details!
From the time I found out I was pregnant I was determined to not be induced this time around. I decided to carefully watch my weight gain and to keep exercising throughout the entire pregnancy in hopes that I would get a shot a starting labor naturally. As I approached the 40 week mark I was happy to have only gained 30 pounds and I was still exercising 60-90 minutes per day. During the last few weeks of my pregnancy I stopped going to the gym and instead I would take Lily for a 5 mile walk after dropping Jack off at school. The hope was that all the walking would help me progress on my own and not need an induction.
Friday morning, at my 39 week check up I was only 1 cm dilated and 20% effaced. I asked the doctor to sweep my membranes and it was much more painful than I remembered. That Sunday the kids had another 1 mile fun race and Luke ran with them while I power walked. At one point Lily had a meltdown because she wanted water. I had the waters but I was pretty far behind them, so I tried to run to catch them but had to stop because it was too hard to run. Later that day I noticed that I lost a good amount of my mucous plug and kept losing small parts throughout the day. I got really excited thinking that contractions would start any minute. But nothing happened. I went to bed Sunday night really disappointed.
Monday morning I dropped Jack off at school and Lily and I did another 5 mile walk. Spent the day doing my normal Monday cleaning routine and I lost a couple small pieces of my plug. But still no contractions.
My next doctor appointment was Thursday and i was about 1.5 cm dilated. The doctor said she would stretch me to a 2 and then sweep my membranes again. Afterwards Lily and I went to a local Mexican food restaurant where I ate a chorizo burrito stuffed with fresh jalepenos. It was the spiciest thing I have ever ate. And then we did another 5 mile walk. Still nothing.
Friday I went to get a chiropractic adjustment and acupuncture. Before the appointment I started feeling a lot of pressure really low. Not like waves of pressure or contractions, but more like the baby pushing really hard on my cervix or something. It was massively painful and I had to stop and breathe through the pain a few times. The pain came and went for several hours and I was getting hopeful that it would lead to something. After my adjustment and acupuncture the pain subsided and nothing more happened.
Saturday we drove up the mountain to hopefully get something going with the change in altitude. That night I had a dream that my water broke and I went into labor. I even woke up several times during the dream with pain in my stomach and then I would fall back asleep and would dream about being in labor again.
Wednesday morning I had another doctor appointment. I was 3 cm and 50% effaced. But we also discovered baby wasn't growing as much as the doctor would have liked. The ultrasound showed that my placenta might be showing signs of aging, and the doctor was worried that the baby was growth restricted at this she told us we needed to be induced that night or the next morning. We decided to do the induction in the morning. So Thursday morning the kids woke up around 6:45am like normal, I got them ready and fed them breakfast. Nani arrived around 7am and took a picture of us a family of 4, then Luke and I headed off to the hospital. First we stopped at the donut shop and picked up a dozen donuts to bring the nurses, then we stopped and got me a bagel. We arrived at the hospital around 7:30am and got situated into our room.
We met our nurses and hung out for a while until the doctor showed up at 9am. The doctors office that I had been seeing for the last 9 months is a little unusual. You get to choose your doctor who will do all your prenatal visits, but when it comes time to deliver you get whichever doctor is on call that day. So most likely you will not get your doctor. But I got lucky and my doctor was on call that day so she showed up around 9am and we talked about the plan. She was well aware of my wishes for a natural childbirth and wanted to help me in whatever way possible. We had wanted to avoid pitocin and the plan was to try cervidil first in hopes that it would get my contractions going and I wouldn't need any other interventions. But when she checked my cervix I was now dilated to 3.5 and cervidil wasn't the best option. So we decided to start with the lowest dose of pitocin in hopes it would get my contractions going. So now I had to get hooked up to the IV which sucked. At 9am we started pitocin at the lowest dose (#1) and every half hour the nurse would increase it by one.
Luke and I watched some of my favorite shows that I would always watch while exercising at the gym such as house hunters international, food network and Let's Ask America. My contractions were getting very consistent and coming every 2-3 minutes but not too painful. The nurse kept increasing the pitocin and by the time she increased it to #5 I was getting some pretty strong contractions. I decided to try the enema to keep up the contractions and then we put on the hypnobabies CD. The problem was that i had been listening to this CD every night at bedtime and would always fall asleep to it, so it made me really tired. As soon as I got in bed I relaxed and almost fell asleep but my contractions slowed way down. After about 15 minutes the nurse came in to see what happened since she saw my contractions slow and we decided I needed to get out of bed and walk the halls. I was feeling great and now it was nearly 1pm so they called my doctor to do a check and decide where to go from here.
My doctor came by and asked how I was doing. I told her I was feeling great which isn't what anyone wanted to hear after 4 hours on pitocin. She was happy to see that I was getting really consistent contractions (as long as I was walking), but when she checked me she said I had no cervical change since my appointment that morning and the baby hadn't dropped at all. She was not comfortable increasing the pitocin anymore (now I was at #6) since I was already having good contractions, we just needed to get those contractions to work better. She suggested breaking my water in order for the baby to be able to drop and put pressure on my cervix. After a few minutes of turmoil, I consented and she inserted the amniohook and broke my water right after 1pm. The amniotic fluid was nice and clear which was great and the doctor left us alone to labor.
As soon as my water was broken I could feel more pressure and I didn't want to walk around anymore. I just wanted to lay in bed and listen to my CD. Soon the contractions were strong enough that I needed to concentrate through them. I would say "open" or "release" with each contraction and I was trying really hard to listen to the CD and follow the hypnobabies prompts. At one point I had to get out of bed to pee and as soon as I stood I lost my plug on the floor. Instead of calling the nurses, Luke decided to clean it up himself (what a trooper!). After using the bathroom Luke tried to convince me to walk around more since laying in bed stalled my contractions last time. But I couldn't do it, I needed to be in bed. Soon the contractions were coming strong and fast and I was having to be louder with breathing through them. I told Luke that I thought I needed some pain medicine and wanted to try getting in the bath first but then I wanted some fentanyl. Luke started the bath and the nurse came in, he told her that I was in a lot of pain and was thinking of getting some medicine but first I wanted to try the bath. But before the bath was even filled I told the nurse that I was feeling "pushy." This nurse was only an intern so she left to get the older nurse and by then I was losing control and unable to relax. The contractions came faster and stronger and as soon as the nurses came back in I was saying "I need to push!" The older nurse told the intern to check me but I was mid contraction and I wasn't letting her so the nurse kind of yelled at me "You need to let her check you!" It was obviously time and the doctor wasn't there when I started pushing. The nurses had to prepare for baby. I felt like I needed to be more upright so Luke raised the bed all the way up and I was able to flip around and kneel with my belly against the back of the chair and my arms draped over the top of the chair and bear down using gravity. The doc ran in the room as I was pushing and I remember hearing her say "I don't have gloves!" and one of the nurses saying "You don't need your gloves."
I had been dreading this pushing part for 9 months and now it was time. And even though we knew this baby would be small, the pain was unbearable... I asked the nurse for the fentanyl again and she said it was too late. I knew I had to do this so I made up my mind to push hard as I could through the pain. I was grabbing the bed (and luke's arm) so hard as I pushed that I was sore for days after. Each push I was begging to know if I was almost done. Finally I felt her head come out and I was ready to collapse and they yelled "not yet!" One more big push and baby was finally out and all I could do was lean against the bed and moan. It was 3:16pm just two hours after the doctor broke my water.
They placed baby on the bed and asked Luke "well, what does it look like?" and Luke said "oh, it's a girl!" I was still kneeling/laying against the back of the upright bed so I had to turn around to see the baby but I couldn't hold her until they cut the cord since I couldn't sit down with the position I was in. So we let the cord pulsate for a minute or so and then Luke cut it and I was able to turn around to sit and hold my baby girl. But that's when we noticed she was purple and before I could hold her a nurse took her away to put her on oxygen.
And that's when the real torture started. With my history of heavy bleeding after Lily, the doc was concerned with delivering the placenta. I delivered it fine but then had several large clots that she had to go and manually remove. And not only that, but they were pushing on my stomach so hard I wanted to scream at them. Finally I asked for the fentanyl because I couldn't take any more pain. While they were torturing me, my poor baby was across the room struggling to breathe. Luke was with her and the nurse and they were giving her oxygen and trying to get her to cry really strong. At one point they told me they had to take her to the nicu and when I asked to hold her they said "don't worry, you'll be able to hold her this evening" Then I lost it. Between the pain of the doctor digging out my placenta and not being able to hold my baby I just started crying and couldn't stop. And then I had to be stitched up which did make me scream and I was at my emotional and pain limit. All I could do was cry. It took over an hour for them to finish their work on me and an hour of giving the baby oxygen and then finally someone was able to bring in a portable oxygen machine and they let me hold my baby girl while they covered her mouth/nose with the oxygen. Unfortunately I kept bleeding so my torture lasted a while longer but it was better since I was holding my baby.
Thankfully her oxygen stabilized after they let me hold her and they didn't take her away again. We stayed in the labor & delivery room for a couple of hours and then we were moved to our postpartum care room. And the funny thing about postpartum care, my nurse was also my landlord. Nothing like talking about rent one minute and then my clot sizes the next!
