L & D of Ellis Matthew Owen

I was told the Thursday before my 39 weeks that we were going to deliver on 10/3 if I did not go into labor on my own. At that doctors appointment, I was 1-2 cm so the goal for the weekend was to make that a little better so I did not have to go in to the hospital on 10/2 for Cervidal (mostly because it did nothing for me when I had Clara!). At my doctor's appointment on Monday, I was 2-3 and they decided to have me come in on Tuesday (which is a good thing since I was at the hospital with Heather all day Monday since she had a timely bleed). Tuesday morning, they called at 6 AM and told us to call them at 8 since they were a little busy and wanted to wait to induce me. At 7:15, we got another call and we were told to come in! We got out of bed, and headed to the hospital.

We arrived to a slow start. They did not start me on pitocin until about 10:30 and turned it up. I was already having my own contractions but these brought them to about 3-4 m minutes apart. We watched a DVD while they got all my drips in order (insulin, sugar, pitocin, iv) and all of a sudden at around noon, my water bag broked on it's own! It was a strange feeling because I was not expecting it at all. That was good news for me though because it was one less thing the doctors had to do for me.

Shortly after that, the contractions starting getting pretty bad. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people at the same time asking for an epidural so I had to wait for over an hour and half for one. They had to call a second doctor in to do the floor for epidurals since there was such a demand. I got that second doctor and by the time he came in at 2:30 I was in a LOT of pain (and about 5 CM) so he gave me an epidural AND a spinal. The spinal kicked in right away and I was pain free for about an hour or two. Shortly after THAT, I started to feel the contractions again. We did a boost of the epidural twice but my pain was multiplying more than that so I did not feel it. They checked me again (I would say sometime before 4) and I was 8 cm and shortly after that I was 9. I was feeling so much pressure though, they decided that I should start to push. We did that with the nurse and after pushing for a while, the called the doctor who told me to STOP pushing because he was delivering another baby and needed to be there when I got the baby out. That was probably one of the most painful and awful experiences of my life, having those full on contractions and not being able to push. We waited for far too long, maybe about 40 minutes and finally they let me push. I probably had to push for another 20-30 minutes (for a total of an hour and ten) and he came out! The doctor said he is a star gazer, facing the wrong way which is why the delivery was so awful. I could feel almost all of it. When they were going to make the cut, they asked me if I could feel the knife and I could so they had to give me a local. And I still felt it when he cut. I must say, Clara's was a walk in the park compared to this delivery. I was rather immune to what was going on "down there" for her delivery.

But in return, I got a perfect baby boy! You could not ask for anything better.