Long: I got to the hospital at about 3:30pm. By 4:00pm I had the Cervedil in, and by around 5 I began contraction slightly. I was just mostly crampy and had some irritation. I got some sleep that night, and so did Jeremiah. When I got there I was about 1cm, and they decided the Cervedil would work better than a low dose of Pitocin. They took out the Cervedil at 4:30 and the Pitocin was started at 5:00am on Wednesday morning. I began having more contractions, but still not too bad or intense yet.
My doc came in at 10:30pm to tell me what was going on, and I explained to her about wanting to wait till around 4-5cm to get the epi. She said that was fine, just as long as I was in a steady and regular labor pattern I could get the epi. She didn’t care if it was at 2cm.
At 9:00 the next morning the doc came in and decided to break my water. She tried to place an internal monitor to check the intensity of my contractions, but it was not happening. This was not a pleasant experience by 9:30; however, I began having contractions, steady contractions.
Around 10:45 I began to really get in agony. At this point my mom came up, and I began having to really breathe through the contractions. They came in and checked me at 12; I had progressed to 2.5 – 3cm. By now I was in severe pain, so I asked for the epi. It took till 1:30 for the anesthesiologist to get there, and during that 1.5hours I was MISERABLE! I could only breathe and yell, and I did throw one or two soft things and no, I threw them at the wall and not Jeremiah lol. They were coming around 3-4 minutes steadily now.
At 1:30 the lady came in to do the epi. She was AMAZING - very fast, very gentle and very kind. Mom stayed in there with me while Jeremiah went out to walk off the nervous energy (he doesn’t handle needles well lol). I felt almost no pain from the epi, and as soon as she gave me that first dose I felt relief. I had three contractions during the time that she was giving it to me, but since I was sitting up they oddly felt better. Within a minute I was feeling pressure from the contractions, but no pain. 20 minutes later, I was in heaven. Oddly though, since I have scoliosis, my left side got number than my right so that was very odd
They checked me after, I had progressed to 5cm so I kept my goal of making it to 4 or 5cm. At around 3:00 the nurse came in to check on me, I asked her if I was still having contractions. She said “Oh yea! Very regular, every 2-3minutes”. I was sooooo happy to not be feeling anything anymore!!
At 4:00 my blood pressure dropped barely, but started the machine beeping. I finally called the nurse in; I thought it was the IV anyway, because the beeping was annoying lol. While in there she checked me, and I was at 9.5cm!! When she told me I was getting ready to have a baby I flipped out! I couldn’t believe I had made so much progress!
At 4:30 the doc came in and had me give some practice pushes. Sure enough, I was ready to push. The nurse worked with me for about 15 minutes, and then went and got the doc because the baby started having a decelerating heart rate. I didn’t know any of this was going on, but apparently the baby has a lower heart rate the whole time. Freaked my mom and Jeremiah out, but I was pretty calm.
They had me keep pushing in sets of 4, and then rest. The doc told me at one point she might have to use the vacuum because of what the baby was doing, and because my pushing was not very effective.
I immediately tried harder, and we made fast progress and didn’t need alternate measures anyway. I pushed about 10 more minutes after that (or so, forgive me on the times they are a bit hazy) and then he was here!! Long and skinny and pale.
So, in all I labored about 7hrs and pushed about 45min or so. I LOVED being induced, and I had a great labor experience!
