A Birth Story... Part 1

Well I am unsure of how great my story telling ability is BUT I am going to give it a go, please bare with me ... Miss P is in my lap as I type.

Where to begin?

Ummm, It was Friday January 7, 2011 and I was 40 weeks and 2 days pregnant and headed to the hospital to get induced. I had no sings of labor up until this point. No contractions, I had been stuck at 1 centimeter dilated (barely) for 4 weeks. NADA. Nothing. Zilch!

That day I was nervous... ok really nervous! Nervous knowing that by the end of the weekend Mr. G and I would be joyfully bringing our own child into the world!

I had no idea what I was about to face in the upcoming days, it was probably better that I didn't!

DAY 1:

So, to start the process of labor they gave me Cervidil. Cervidil literally looks like a shoe lace that they place around the cervix to soften it up and make it ready for labor. This process take 12 hours. So my first night in the hospital was a hurry up and wait. They fed me dinner at the hospital. Had I known I wasn't going to be able to eat until that following Tuesday I would have eaten a lot more food!!!

DAY 2:

The nurses woke me up at 6am to remove the Cervidil! Good news: the cervidil had kick started some contractions for me, which is a step in the right directions! Bad news: no change in my cervix at all. The nurse says they will start me on Pitocin. Pitocin is the synthetic form of Oxytocin.

Pitocin is generally used in two ways: 1) to induce labor, and 2) to augment speed up labor.

In my case it was to start labor! The bad thing about this drug is that the pain associated with this drug is intense because it causes intense contractions that are not natural. I was on this drug for about 30 hours!

Enough information on the drugs. So, the doctor comes in and says if there is no change in my cervix in the next 12 hours of being on Pitocin they will have to redo the Cervidil for an additional 12 hours to try again. This was not encouraging news at all!

So about 3 hours later I finally dilated to a full one! So the doctor decided that I was ok on this path and I did not need to redo the Cervidil. Yay!

So at this point I was having regular contractions, nothing too painful and nothing this tough girl couldn't handle. It wasn't until about 1pm that everything changed! I was talking to Mr. G, my mom, mother in law and our friend John when I felt a very painful pop! I thought wow baby P just kicked me hard! Well that kick I felt was my water breaking! And it was from that moment on that every contraction HURT LIKE HELL! Might I add that my contractions at this point were about 6 mins apart! I was only 2 centimeters dilated! So after about 3 hours of intense contractions the doctor finally approved for me to get an epidural!!! It was such a relief to finally not feel like I was dying. (Oh ya at this point I was only allowed to eat ice chips and let me tell you how unsatisfying that was when I was so so so thirsty!)

(Mr. G feeding me ice chips and talking me through a contraction)

So, during the epidural we had a scare. Miss P did not like me laying on my side and her heart rate sky rocketed to about 22o bpm and they quickly took me off my side and gave me oxygen and monitored me for about 15 mins. The doctors believe that me laying on my side was stressing her out or her umbilical cord was getting smashed. They ended up sitting me up right to give me my epidoral, a quick process ended up taking over an hour because of our scare with Miss P.

After all was said and done I was thanking my lucky stars for my epidural! And was able to get a good nights rest! Tomorrow was the big day... the doctor came in and told me that no matter what, she was coming tomorrow! I was very tired and excited!!!


Part 2 coming soon...