Well, after weeks of early labor signs, I started having consistent contractions on Tuesday (4/27/10) that felt different than what I'd felt before. I also had bloody show the day before and started becomig really crampy. Well, on Tuesday I had gone to the gym with my friend Anna in hopes that I would start something. Well, it did start something! LoL I called Jimmy from my mom's house and told him that I thought we should go in. It was already later in the evening (around 8 p.m), so I started thinking that maybe Caleb would arrive right on his due date! I thought, How cool is that?! Jimmy got there, and we left right away. The contractions weren't bad in the car---just really consistent and uncomfortable.
When we arrived at the birth center, I was shaking and just really, REALLY nervous, which intensified the pain almost immediately. The nurses rushed to help me to my room, and I got hooked up to the moniters. Contractions were about 2.5 to 3 minutes apart. I started having constant horrific back pain that got worse with contractions, and I couldn't find a position to relieve it. I tried all fours, leaning over the bed, leaning on Jimmy, etc, but nothing worked. They checked me and I was dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced. Contractions started getting much, much more painful, and this went on for hours. They got down to 1.5-2 minutes apart. They checked me about an hour after the first time and I was 2-3 cm and 80% effaced. An hour after that, I was a tight 3 and 90% effaced. I thought, Okay, this is it! I'm making progress with each hour, which is pretty average and good considering I'm a first-timer. By this point, the contractions were still manageable but very painful. Five hours later...still a 3 and 90%. I was devastated. I started stressing myself out even more, and my contractions started to space themselves back out. All in all, I was in that early stage of labor for 12 hours before the contractions became spaced out enough that I didn't consider myself in labor anymore.
Since we only live about 10-15 minutes from the hospital, we decided to go home for a bit to try to sleep since the hospital beds are so uncomfortable, and I really needed rest. But my inconsistent contractions were still painful enough to wake me up every so often, and I only managed about 2.5 hours of broken sleep. Around 8 that night (4/28/10), I called my midwife and told her I wanted to come back in---that I couldn't handle being in painful early labor for who knew how much longer. I was already exhausted, and I wanted to try to see if pitocin would help jumpstart my labor again to get it back on track. She agreed that it might, and that I should come in to take a sleeping pill to try to get some rest before starting the pitocin.
So we get there and get situated back in our same room from the day before. I get put on the monitors and my contractions are every 6-8 minutes apart---sometimes less. A nurse comes in and checks me--still a 3 and 90% effaced. She gives me two small Ambien pills--and I had a HORRIBLE reaction! About 15 minutes after taking them, I started hallucinating really strongly. Everything in the room turned to monsters and animals and the painting came alive and I was just in pure terror! Jimmy called in the nurse (who I don't remember actually coming in), and they were trying to tell me that nothing was real, but it all looked so vivid, and it took me a long while to fall asleep.
Finally I did, and I woke up on my own around 4:30 a.m (4/29/10). I had been told the day before that pitocin would be started around 5 or 6 in the morning, so I beeped the nurse to let them know that I was awake. She came in and refreshed my cup of water, then told me that I would be hooked up to the monitors at 6. She explained how they were really short-staffed since 3 babies had ended up in NICU and required round-the-clock one-on-one care. So, at 6 I get hooked up. They didn't start pitocin until past 9 in the morning. She started it at just 1, which almost immediately got my contractions to 3-4 minutes apart. After about 20-30 minutes, she bumped me up to a two. Contractions got down to a pretty consistent 3 minutes apart. When they started kind of spacing out just a bit longer than 3 minutes apart (this was maybe after an hour?), she bumped it up to 4. Contractions started coming about 2.5-3 minutes apart, and were becoming much more uncomfortable, but definitely manageable.
By around 11, my pit was up to 8, and contractions were about 2 minutes apart. They were a lot more uncomfortable and painful. They kept it at an 8 for a couple hours, and I was getting tired already. Sometime later (don't remember how long exactly, but no longer than 2 hours), they had me up to a 10. By this point I was really having to breathe through them, and I wanted everyone to leave besides Jimmy. The nurses figured that my labor had picked up on its own, so they lowered the pit back down to 8, and they were right: my contractions stayed the same. I was REALLY getting uncomfortable and couldn't help yelling out in pain through each contraction. It was already starting to feel like too much, but I was still devoted to trying for my NCB.
Around 4:30 p.m., she checked my cervix and I was only a 4, which I had been for hours. But when she checked my cervix, my pain just skyrocketed and I just kept wailing and wailing because the pain wouldn't go away and it was soooooo intense and overwhelming. It never did get better. For the next three hours it just kept getting worse and worse. They lowered the pit all the way down to a 2, but my body had kicked in on its own like we'd been hoping. I couldn't handle the pain, and just kept screaming each time a contraction hit. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I hadn't expected to feel like that until transition, so I was completely unprepared. By 7 p.m. I requested the epidural. I was completely ashamed of myself, feeling llike a failure, but I was literally willing to do anything to get the pain to stop. She had to check me first, and we were all surprised and horribly disappointed to find that I was still a 4, but 100% effaced. My body was just too exhausted and stressed to dilate. She thought the epi would help me relax and progress faster. She told me that it would take 30-40 minutes to get set up and put in, and I just bawled and bawled and screamed through contractions. Those next 45 minutes (she lied!! Agh!) were the worst of my life, knowing that relief was coming and yet so far away.
Then---FINALLY! Getting the epidural was hard because I kept getting insane contractions but wasn't allowed to move. She turned off the pit completely because my body didn't need it. I was contracting ever 1.5-2 minutes on my own. They had a somewhat difficult time getting the epi into place because my back is hard with muscle. She thought I was a gymnast. HA!
After that, it was soooooo nice. The epi was set to a 10, and I could still feel my legs and my contractions---but I didn't feel the pain hardly at all---just a very slight crampiness. It made these huge, off-the-chart contractions feel like my prelabor BH. I don't regret getting it at all! My mom came to keep me company, and I could actually talk to her and just relax while my contractions continued to come every 2 minutes.
Then, at 8:27 p.m., my water broke! It was funny how it happened, because my midwife was literally just about to break my water for me. (I was a 4-5 dilated.) But when she stuck her fingers in to check my dilation, we heard a *pop* on the monitor and my water broke on its own! It was like Caleb wanted to show her that he could do it on his own. LOL I finally managed to sleep for a little while (about an hour), and I woke up around 12:30 a.m. (4/30/10). She checked me and I was a 6-7 cm, 100% effaced and 0 station. I fell back asleep and woke up around 1:30 a.m.
The nurse came in at 2:10 and checked me and... I WAS COMPLETE!!!!! I was so excited! I told her I wanted to wait till I felt the urge to push, and she said that was fine. Around 2:45, my midwife came in and verified that I was complete and at a +2 station. She told me to give an experimental push, and when I did everyone got excited (the nurse, DH, and the midwife). Apparently that first push brought him right down to where you could see the crown of his head. With 5 more contractions, he was out! His cord was wrapped around his neck, which is why his HR would dip to the 80s-90s during eeach contraction. It only took maybe 15 minutes tops to push him out, which is so nice when you consider how the rest of my labor went. Hearing his first cry was the greatest sound in the whole world! They handed him to me, and DH cut his umbilical cord. His Apgar was 9, he's 7 lb 5 oz, and 19.5 inches long. He was born at 3:06 a.m., April 30, 2010.
I'm happy about all the decisions I made, and we are so in love with our little man! He latched on right away after they cleaned him up, and he's been a great breastfeeder thus far! I'm really surprised at how much he looks like me rather than Jimmy! He has light brown hair and doesn't really look Korean at all!
Picture time!
Minutes after being born:
Happy mommy!
And happy daddy!
And here's a video of Caleb being alert!
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Caleb's loooooong entrance!!! Very long and pic-loaded!
What a wonderful day to be born! Yay Caleb!
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Hopefully you'll heal quickly hun.
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