Birth Story

As I mentioned in my It's Time!!!! post, August 2nd I went in for my NST and they discovered that my amniotic fluid level was extremely low, so that combined with high blood pressure and contractions every 3 minutes, they decided that it was time for baby Cor.ben to be born! I was so excited thinking that I was going to get to meet my baby boy that day. I will save you the blow by blow details otherwise I may never have the time to tell you my birth story or you very well may just get bored reading a super long post.

Basically after I arrived at L & D to be induced I was started on pitocin and I maxed that out without making any progress. They also inserted a foley bulb to force my cervix to dilate to 4 cm, but after that I still wouldn't progress anymore. They continued to try cytotec, more pitocin, and breaking my water (all of this was occurring over the 4 day period). At some point I did finally get to an 8, but then my cervix became swollen and I went back to 6cm. I was having regular contractions, but they just weren't helping my cervix to dilate or efface. I was able to go 3 days with absolutely no pain meds and my husband and I worked through the contractions like champs. However, when 2 hours after they broke my water and told me that I still had made absolutely no progress I knew that I couldn't keep on being in pain if nothing was working and my last option at this point was to hope that my body would finally decide to dilate or have a c-section. So, I finally got an epidural..... BUT of course that didn't work either. When it first was placed I had relief for about an hour and then it quit working and that button they give you to push when you need more medicine did nothing too. They would push more medication through the catheter and I would have some relief for maybe 30 minutes and then nothing! The next morning (day 4) I still hadn't progressed and it had been about 14 hours since they broke my water and I had a fever, so my last remaining option was to get a c-section.

They had to replace my epidural for surgery since mine wasn't working and let me tell you I think I got the worst person ever! Not only did she do EVERYTHING so slowly, but she was just horrible. I was in so much pain and wanted relief so badly. As you know when you're getting an epidural you have to remain completely still, so it took all of my will power to do that while she's moving slower than a snail and I'm having really painful contractions. The first try she got it in a vein and had to do it again. I thought my husband was going to punch her, he was so mad!

When I got to the OR they discovered that I still had feeling on my left side. They gave me more medicine and I still could feel. At this point they were talking doing a spinal or general anesthesia, but they went ahead and took my epidural out and put in another one. This one seemed to work, so they started the c-section and brought my husband in. I was so excited and nervous that I couldn't look at him or I would burst into tears. Shortly after I heard the most beautiful sound of my baby crying. That was the most amazing moment. They took him over to the table to be cleaned up and started sewing me back up. At this point I started being able to feel pain and what they were doing. My anesthesiologist tried two times adding more medication and it didn't work, so they had to give me a hypnotic medication to make me loopy and out of it. That was the strangest feeling ever! I felt like I was in another world and when I would talk I couldn't tell if sound was actually coming out. The bad part is that I couldn't focus my eyes, so when they brought my son over for me to see I couldn't tell what he looked like. It took them about 30 minutes to put me together and stitch me up and then I went to recovery for a few hours, where the medication finally wore off and my husband was able to bring me my precious baby. Apparently part of the problem was that he was facing sunny side up, but I don't know what is up with my body not responding to any of the treatments. I spent three more days in the hospital and now we're finally home! I'm so in love and loving being a mommy! My husband is an excellent daddy too and I must say that we make a great team. The c-section recovery has also been a breeze and I've been able to do so much more than I thought I would. We even went out to lunch yesterday and stopped by the store to get some stuff for Cor.ben.

Wow, good thing I didn't give the complete details of labor otherwise this would have been a novel! Oops! I'm going to do pictures in a separate post.