Nerdy Girl's Life

We were scheduled to go in on Friday 4/10 at 8pm PST in order to begin the induction so we spent the day finishing our priority list and met some friends for dinner. We were minutes from heading out the door when the hospital called.

They had 3 spontaneous labors show up and so they didn't have any nurses to take care of me (you basically get your own nurse in my hospital). We were told they would call us when room opened up. 11pm rolls around and they call saying MORE women had shown up so we were still on hold and they would call sometime in the night when hopefully space would open up.

I slept horribly for the second night in a row because of nerves, fear they would send me to a different hospital because of my pre-e risk, and pain from what I did not know was back labor.

They called me at 6:30 am 4/11 to call me in so we got breakfast and headed in to the hospital.

At 8:00 I had my first oral dose of 24 hours worth of misoprostol (Cytotech) to get my cervix ripe and ready for more aggressive induction methods. We hung out all day just hoping it wouldn't take long, bored, and me thinking I was suddenly very constipated (back labor plus actual constipation is icky). We complained a lot about being bored.

That night I wanted to smack the nurses because they kept checking me and Josephine was very active and wouldn't sit still for the monitors, so they made me sleep confined to one side or the other, which made my back/hip pain worse. They also refused to give me the heavy duty sleep aid I was told I could have.

At 12pm on 4/12 we moved to the foley bulb. This is a mechanical means to stretch the cervix and stimulate it to dilate to 3cms. The Miso had ripened me a bit, but I hadn't dilated much so the bulb would dilate me in a few hours and fall out when I was 3cms.

45 mins after that I had to use the restroom and suddenly I felt what I thought was a strange pressurized pee and felt a splat and heard a splash. There was a surprising pool of dark red blood at my feet and the bulb had fallen out! We called the nurse because I was afraid to move in case something was wrong and they were surprised to see it had worked so fast. They helped me clean up and talked to the dr. They checked me and sure enough, I was at 3 cms but still only about 25% effaced. They decided to hook me up on pitocin around 2pm and started me on the lowest level with turning it up 1 every half an hour.

At about 6:30 the charge nurse to check on how I was feeling and when she left I leaned back in the rocker I was sitting in and suddenly felt a gush of fluid. I told C that my water may have broken or I may have peed myself, I was not sure. He took me to the bathroom and the nurse came to check my fluid and Yep, my water had broken.

At this point I had (mostly) determined that my back pain was contractions and noticed an immediate change. I couldn't focus on anything and felt like I couldn't breathe.

To my surprise my nurses said I could take a bath and I was in there for probably 45 minutes, but the water wasn't helping at all and the jets were just annoying me. I asked to get out because I was annoyed that they kept talking to me and were making C hold the monitor in place at my hip (she had moved down very low).

They got me into bed but weren't checking me because of my broken water (they didn't want to risk infection). I started to have a harder time feeling like I could breathe and could not stay calm (internally, I didn't yell once, they were amazed by how stoic I was) and then my BP started rising very suddenly to worry (stroke) levels. When they checked and it was very suddenly and quickly about 193/108 they were starting to panic (in that calm way they have to try not to alarm you) and I asked for some pain relief. They offered a narcotic pain bed which they said would make ms feel out of if and could affect the baby, or an epi, which could lower my BP. They didn't push one or the other, but I decided the epi was less likely to effect her, would keep me aware, work faster, and help my BP. My decision was firmed up when they gave me a small dose of another BP med and it made be very sick and throw up.

They got the epi tech in very fast and got it done and placed very quickly around 9 pm or so. This allowed me to doze off almost right away and I barely cared about the constant monitor adjusting and hovering of the nurses. My BP almost immediately improved into a better range as well. They checked me and I was at 5cms 60% dilated.

At 11 they checked me and I was at 8cms and paper thin. They told me to tell them if I felt the need to poop badly/push. I wanted to poo badly all day, but at 11:30 it started to feel more intense. They checked and I was at 9.5 with no cervix to be felt. They called the dr and had me practice push and could feel her start to move so we held off and they started prepping. At 12:20 or so they started having me push. The dr showed up at around 12:45 and at 1:26 Josephine Mae came into the world coughing but otherwise pretty quiet.

The dr checked me and I miraculously hadn't torn and she seemed surprised by how short the push time was and she barely did anything other than unwrap the cord from her neck and catch.

I am happy to report that I have needed almost no pain meds since, except some colace and ibuprofen. The ibuprofen was really only because the epi spot became a bit sore.

I have been walking and using the bathroom like normal and everyone seems very surprised by that.

Hopefully we go home today but I think the estimate is Wednesday with baby's hypoglycemia, which I will add a post on later.

I need to ask what her APGAR was because I have no idea. We did an hour of skin to skin and I was just out of it exhausted.