I was scheduled to be induced at 12:15am Friday Oct 28th but the hospital called me late the night before and said not to come in then because they didn't have a room for me and they'd call when something opened up. Needless to say, that was one sleepless night. After calling to check on the status and getting a very firm "don't call us, we'll call you" type answer we got the phone call to come in at 8:45a Friday morning. We arrived at the hospital around 10 and the pitocin was started around 11am. For the hour I was hooked up to the monitor before the pitocin even started I was contracting every 2-4 minutes. Once the pitocin started things slowly got more painful but nothing unbearable. I labored from 11a until the doctor finally came to see me around 5:30pm. She said I was only 3 cm dilated (I walked in at 2 cm dilated). I was so disheartened. The pain was pretty bad at that point and I definitely thought I would have been further along. The OB broke my water when she checked me and there was clear fluid. Immediately after breaking my water the contractions got so intense. I knew I'd end up getting an epidural when they checked me because I couldn't imagine the pain at 9cm based on what I was feeling at 3cm. Because the pain got that much worse, that fast I got the epidural. That was a traumatic experience in itself. I was shaking uncontrollably and so uncomfortable. I just cried and cried through the entire thing and it definitely still hurt! It started working right away on my left side but I could still feel the contractions on the right. After changing positions a few times and waiting long enough for it to "kick in" the anest. decided to just re-do it. The second time was a lot less painful (since I was already numb) but my heartrate dropped dramatically and I almost passed out. They had to give me a shot of epiniphrine (adrenaline) to keep me from doing so. I didn't know that at the time and didn't realize how low my heartrate got. But, I got better immediately and the second time it worked! No more pain:)
I labored for what seemed like forever and each time I progressed faster than the doctors thought I would. I got to 9cm around 11pm that night. That’s when the epidural started to wear off and I got to experience back labor. Yeowsers! Thankfully we caught the anest. just in time to bump up the meds and I was blissfully pain free yet again:) When I got to 10cm they had me labor down for a few hours because she was still at -1 station. I basically sat vertically in bed from midnight until 3am. During that time Piper kept having heart decels which were concerning them. I was given an oxygen mask and we tried changing positions to see if that helped. Knowing now that it likely didn't, they just didn't tell me that. At 3am the doctor and nurse got me to start pushing. I was SO numb that I couldn't move my legs or feel the urge to push. With help I pushed and pushed for 1.5 hours. The whole time they kept a close eye on Piper's heart decels which hadn't seemed to let up. At that point she still had barely come down and during one of the pushes more fluid leaked out and showed that there was meconium in the fluid. Pretty quickly after that the doctors rushed in to discuss having a c-section. I didn't think it but DH told me that they were moving VERY quickly to get me into surgery. They had me in the room and her out within 15 minutes of determining I needed a c-section. Silly me just thought they were being efficient;)
The c-section was also not a fun experience. Throughout labor I would shake uncontrollably and it as no different during the c-section. I spent the majority of the time trying not to shake off the table and barely realized what was happening. I could still feel a tiny bit of what they were doing so I was given some other medicine that made me completely out of it. I heard her cry when she was delivered and DH followed her to get cleaned up. I felt so alone when they stitched me up. I wanted DH with Piper but it was such a weird experience. They finally brought Piper to me so I could see her and kiss her. Once they finally rolled me out into recovery I could hear them working on her (getting her vitals and stuff like that) and DH was taking pictures and trying to talk to me. I was so out of it I barely even looked at her. She as apparently rooting and sucking a ton and I just remember thinking "all I want to do is feed my baby girl but I can't stop shaking!" It was awful:(
We were in recovery for about an hour before getting sent up to the mother/baby unit. That's where I finally saw her clearly and got to hold her. Unfortunately in whatever position I was in, she was just too heavy for me to hold having just had surgery so I had to put her back down:( I don't really remember all the other details but I did get in a good enough position to hold her and the meds wore off shortly after so I could enjoy my time with her.
We spent 4 days at the hospital, had tons of visitors while there and finally got to go home Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the week has been filled with more visitors and trying to return to an altered version of "normal". Piper is amazing. My milk came in on day 2 and she's eating like a champ. She's so content when she isn't trying to eat (then she's a ravenous beast:P). Shes also pretty alert and I love the time of day when she's wide awake and completely content just looking around and enjoying the sights:)
Congrats!!!
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