We arrived at the hospital at 5 am on April 2 for our scheduled induction. They got me all settled in to my bed and Ry, my mom, dad, sister Tina, brother Tyler and baby Mason (Tina and Tyler's baby boy) began the wait with me.
They started my pitocin drip 2 hours later around 7 am. They also started me on my antibiotics for Group B Strep so that I would have multiple doses before Kieran arrived, so as to not transfer it to her. Dr. Smith came by around then too to let me know he would be back early afternoon to break my water. Throughout the morning they began slowly increasing the pitocin drip to try and make the contractions stronger and closer together. It got to be around 12 pm and while the monitor was telling us that the contractions were decently strong and fairly close together, I really wasn't feeling much in the way of contractions (at least based on what I had been told they would feel like). I wasn't even certain I was feeling them at all. I even got to take a nap in the late morning.
Dr. Smith came back around 1 pm to break my water. He asked me if I had my epidural yet and I told him I had asked to wait because I didn't want to slow anything down and I wasn't really in any pain from contractions yet. He told me at this point I was going to want them to give me the epidural, since breaking my water would make the contractions much more intense. I told the nurse I was ready for it. At that point, she told me it would be approximately a 1/2 hour or so since the anesthesiologist was finishing up in a C-section. The nurse came back about an hour later (around 2 pm) to let me know another nurse had grabbed the anesthesiologist on his way into my room and told him to go to her patient's room first because she was screaming in pain. At this point, I about lost it. My contractions were getting pretty intense at this point and I NEEDED that epidural. Ry was so sweet and just kept holding my hand through the pain. About a 1/2 hour later (around 2:30 pm) when things were starting to get really bad, the anesthesiologist finally came in to give me the epidural. Thank goodness!!
The epidural only initially took on one side of my body. It was a really weird feeling. I could still feel the contractions (milder contractions of course) on the left side of my belly. They came back in and fixed it for me and from there on out I couldn't feel a thing. Not even any pressure. If it weren't for the monitor they had hooked up, I wouldn't even have known that I was still having contractions. From there I labored for another couple hours until around 5 pm. The nurse came back in to check my progress and told me I was still only at 5 cm and 70% effaced. With that news, we thought it would for sure be safe for Ry to go downstairs and grab some food. She came back about a 1/2 hour later (5:30 pm) to check me again. At this point, she looked up at me and just smiled. I thought for sure she was going to tell me I had only progressed another cm or so, but she told me I was completely ready to go and that the baby's head was right there so we could start pushing! I started to get worried because Ry was still gone. Luckily he was already on his way back up (5:45 pm) and my family (who had been waiting in the hall while I was getting checked) filled him in on everything.
The nurses called the doctor to let him know they were going to start some practice pushes with me before he came. So I pushed with the nurses from around 6:15 pm or so until 7 pm. At this point I asked them to turn off the epidural because I couldn't feel anything in order to push. Shortly after that, Dr. Smith showed up and we pushed with him. Towards the end of pushing I was starting to be able to feel pressure, but still no pain from the epidural wearing off. After about an hour and 1/2 of pushing, Kieran joined us!!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment