Fast forward to about 10:30 pm, these "cramps" started coming a lot closer together and were much stronger. I still had yet to tell anyone that I was feeling these cramps. Michael and I decided to head to bed because he had to go to work the next day, and I was hoping to get some rest just in case. About 11:15 pm, I was in quite a bit of pain so I woke Michael up and told him that I thought I was having contractions, and I was gonna go take a hot shower to try and ease the pain. Didn't help one bit, so I tried taking a bath. Nope still didn't help.
Around 1:30 am we decided to head to the hospital after speaking with the Dr. At this point the contractions were coming every 3-4 minutes and were lasting over 1 minute. When we got to the hospital the nurses checked me and I was still 1 cm dilated and 80% effaced. I was a little discouraged because that is where I was at my Dr.'s appointment earlier that day. The nurse told me that I needed to walk around for a while and they would check me in a few hours. Well she never came back to unhook me from the monitors, so I couldn't get up to walk around.
Around 4:30 am the nurse came in to check on me, and I still had not made any progress. She called the Dr. to let her know that I still had not progressed, so the Dr. told the nurse to send me home and let me labor at home for a while. Michael and I were both pretty upset at this point, I was in so much pain.
When I got home I got back in the tub to see if that would help ease the pain, but it didn't. The pain was so bad, no matter what position I tried, nothing seemed to help. I think I scared my sister, because I was screaming from the pain. Yep I was totally one of those screamers!!!
Around 8:00 am we called the Dr. and she told us to head back up to the hospital to get checked out again. I was terrified that I would be sent home again so I prayed the whole way there. When we got to the hospital, the nurse got us settled in our room and checked to see where I was. I was so relieved to hear that I had progressed to 3 cm. Progress finally!!! The Dr. came in to see me and advised me that they were very busy that day and if I wanted an epidural than I needed to have it within the next few hours. I agreed, so they started an IV to pump some fluids into me before the epi was administered.
Around 10:30 am I had the epi and I was in pure heaven. No more pain, no more crying, just pure pain free heaven. Since I had the epidural, I also had to have a catheter since I wasn't allowed to leave the bed. By 11:30 am my labor had stalled and the Dr. started me on a 2mL/HR pitocin drip. The nurse came into check on me about an hour later and I had not progressed so the pitocin was uped to 4mL/HR, and a hour later bumped up again to 6mL/HR. Still no progress had been made so my pitocin was upped one more time to 8mL/HR.
The Dr. came in and decided to break my water to see if that would help move things along. Luckily there was no meconium in the amneoic fluid. Not long after the pitocin had been increased for the final time, my blood pressure dropped as did the baby's heart rate. The nurse had to give me another bag of fluids to help even everything out. With all the pitocin that was being pumped into me, my labor really stalled so the Dr. decided that to turn off the pitocin and give my body a break.
About 3:30 the Dr. came in to check me again and to my relief and surprise I was finally in the home stretch (so I thought). I was 9 cm dilated and 100% effaced. The Dr. told me that it wouldn't be much longer until I could start pushing. The epi was starting to wear off by now, so the nurse told me I could push the button to top it off. Somehow the medicine leaked out of the tubing and soaked my bed. The anestheoligist came in and fix the tubing and topped off the epi. Heaven again.
At 4:45 pm the Dr. came in checked me and told I was good to go and that I could start pushing. She said, we are going to do about 30 minutes of practice pushing than it will be time for the real work to begin. Well the 30 minutes came and went and the pushing was doing nothing. Some point during the pushing I had to be put on oxygen, because I was really starting to struggle.
Around 6:15 pm the nurse looked at me and said, " I have been with you since 8:00 am this morning, I get off at 7:00 pm and I am determined to see Austin before I get off." The whole time I was pushing the nurse kept telling me she could see his head and he was right there. I decided that I would be brave and use the mirror to see what was going on. Sure enough I could see his head and all his hair. I looked once and than I was done.
Well unforunately 7:00 pm came and went and my wonderful nurse's shift ended. I was so sad to see her go, especially when the new nurse came in. She came into the room and was very in your face and not comforting at all. I was so exhausted by this point I was ready to give up.
Austin's head was turned sideways so with every contraction the nurses and Dr. tried to manually turn his head, but he was not budging. The Dr. said that she was going to need a little help getting him out so she would need to use the forceps or a vacuum to get him out. I quickly shot down the forceps idea, and agreed to the vacuum.
At about 7:45 I had a complete melt down and told everyone I could not do it any more. I was done!!! The Dr. looked at me and told me that I could do it, and was very reassuring. So I mustered up all the strength I had and pushed for another 20 or 30 minutes and he was finally here.
He had a short cord, so the Dr. was not able to hold him up to show me, but I heard his cry and it was perrfect. Michael cut the cord and followed him over while he was being assessed by the team of Dr.'s and nurses. Unfortunately he went to the bathroom after my water had been broken so there was meconium and the Dr. was worried that he swallowed some of it. The NICU team was brought in, in addition to the rest of the nurses. Luckily everything turned out to be fine. He scored a 8 and 9 on his apgars. I ended up having a 2nd degree tear, and need to have both internal and external stitches, ya not fun!!!
Long story short, after 22 hours of labor and 4 hours of pushing our precious baby boy was finally here and we couldn't be more in love!!! He was 8 lbs 12.6 oz and 20 1/2 inches long, and he has more hair than any other baby I have ever seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment