Here is my labor story and what we went through before we finally got to meet our beautiful little girl:
As I think pretty much everyone knows, I was past due with the pregnancy, and when she finally decided to arrive she was 8 days past the original due date (whatever that means). I had honestly come to grips with the fact that we would most likely be induced later on in the week. However, once Friday night came, I began to wonder. I started having really bad back pain and cramping on Friday night that continued into Saturday morning. Then by Saturday afternoon I was having fairly regular contractions in addition to the cramps.
Since it was my first experience with all this, I was pretty sure heading to the hospital was imminent, but I wasn’t going to bet on it so I didn’t disappoint myself. However by about 10pm Saturday night contractions were 5-8 minutes apart lasting about a minute and then by 2am contractions were 2-5 minutes apart lasting about a minute. I was really nervous to call the doctor, but they tell you to call when the contractions are consistently 5 minutes apart, lasting a minute each, for about an hour so I did. The on call doctor said to monitor them for another hour and if they stayed that way to go ahead to the hospital. So basically at this point I knew we wouldn’t be going to church, it was just a matter of when we would head to hospital.
Not wanting to be sent home I endured the contractions until about 5:45am and then finally told Ben that I thought we should probably head to the hospital since contractions were still so close and were getting more intense. I was still nervous that they would end up sending us home, but I wanted to be on the safe side and get things checked out.
We arrived at the hospital at 6:30am and went through all the checking in and such. Nerves were crazy at this point, but since they had already immediately hooked me up to the machines, I at least knew I wasn’t imagining the contractions. J It was in the middle of change of shifts when we arrived so we had to wait until the 7am nurse arrived so that it was a consistent person measuring cervical dilation. When she arrived and checked me, I was still only 2.5 cm dilated, but I was 100% effaced. They contacted the doctor and she said they would monitor me over the next few hours to see how I progressed and then decide whether or not we needed to stay.
The doctor came in about 2 hours later and I had only progressed to 3.5 cm, but she basically told us that since I was over 41 weeks by that point and progressing at all, they were going to keep me there. She said she would expect a cm dilation an hour, but she also understood our desire to go natural so we would hold off on breaking the water until the last possible time. So at this point the excitement set in because I knew we wouldn’t be leaving the hospital until our little on arrived.
Unfortunately my body, though having plenty of contractions and walking around a ton, was not progressing as much as they would have liked. I got to about 6cm dilated by 3pm (very slow progression) and then was still there at about 6pm so we went ahead and made the decision to break the water in hopes that would progress things. Unfortunately by 9pm we were still at about 6.5cm dilated even though by this point my contractions were no more that 2 minutes apart and lasting for at least a minute each. So through a lot of tears and frustration, we made the decision to use a small dose of pitocin to see if that would get things going.
The pitocin did seem to bring contractions slightly closer together and more intense, but unfortunately no significant progress and I was starting to have the shakes and really no time to recover between contractions. Plus at this point I had already been up for 36+ hours without sleep so I was incredibly exhausted and knew that I needed something to help if I was going to make it through such a slow labor progression. So I decided to use a little bit of nubane which I was told would dull the pain. Yah right! All it did was make me loopy and sleepy. Definitely won’t ever use that stuff again. So it got to be 3am and the doctor came in to check me one more time and I was still at only 7cm dilated. At this point I was pretty much at my wits end and didn’t know how much more I could take because I was lucky if I was getting a minute break from contractions that lasted 1 to 1.5 minutes each. After the doctor left, I was talking with Ben and my parents and through a lot of tears and prayer and with their counsel; we made the decision to request a c-section. At this point I had been up for almost 48hours, I had been shivering for the past 6 hours, having intense contractions with little break between them, and I wasn’t sure that I would even have the strength to push if my body did finally progress to where it needed to be.
As much as making this decision tore me up, I knew it was the one that had to be made, and I felt at peace with it (at least as much as you can when all you can think about is the pain of crazy contractions). We wanted things to be all natural, but really after almost 48hours of labor, 21 or which had already taken place at the hospital, each decision we made was necessary.
It was quite the experience getting prepped for the c-section because there wasn’t much break between contractions and they can insert IVs and spinal numbing meds when you are in the middle of one. I have never been so glad to have almost my entire body numb. When put the spinal block in that was the first time in days, I had been free of back pain and contractions and it was amazing. Ben was laughing to himself because as he was watching the surgery, he couldn’t believe how laid back I was, but I was in pain-free heaven and knew that my little one would finally be there very soon.
It turns out that we definitely made a good decision because it would not have mattered how many hours I labored, our little one was not coming out vaginally. The doctor said our baby was facing my right hip and that is why it was so hard for me to progress and why the baby could get no farther in the birth canal, baby was stuck. All that labor could seem like it was a waste of time, but it was real personal spiritual growth experience as well as a time to grow closer to Ben and my parents.
It was all a bit of a whirlwind in the end, but they tipped down the curtain to show me our little one and asked Ben to tell me what it was and he was like “it’s a girl!” Yay we had brought a beautiful little girl into this world and at this point none of the labor mattered and I could care less how she came in the world. All I knew was that she was healthy and she was our little blessing. They got her all cleaned up and then I got to meet her briefly before Ben went off with the nurses to clean her up and give her a little massage while they finished my surgery. What an amazing experience and an even more amazing result.
Alethea Lenora Hill took a long time to get here, but man was it worth it!
7lbs 15oz, 20.5 in. of beauty arrived at 4:07am Monday, February 21st, 2011
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