D-Day (well, not exactly)

Tuesday evening, April 7th, after a nice dinner at CPK with two of my girlfriends (Heather and JD), I went home and started having contractions. Now, this isn't new since I'd been having the Braxton contractions since week 33 or something but I noticed these were a little stronger so I decided to keep track. Mind you, I was past my due date and I was scheduled to be induced on Thursday morning the 9th, so I figured I might as well time the contractions. I kept track of my contractions using contractionmaster.com. The first contraction I noted in the online log was at 9:51pm. I was hoping to do much of the early laboring at home so I wouldn't have to deal with continuous monitoring at the hospital and what not so I figured as long as my water hasn't broke, I would try to stick it out at home for as long as I could. By about 12:30pm, my contractions were about 3 minutes-ish apart, and lasting for about a minute. Also at the time, I had some blood so Sonje and I decided we should officially make a trip to the hospital to see if "its time". Once we got to the hospital, one of the L&D nurses examined me and said that I was actually only at a 2, but since I was already past my due date that I need to stay to see if my labor progresses. So... unfortunately what I was trying to avoid, happened...I was immediately put on the continuous monitor, in other words, I was stuck in bed. Around 3:30am the nurse came back into the room, re-examined me and at this time I had progressed to 4. I was hoping to avoid getting to the hospital too early so I can avoid being stuck in bed and instead, walk and what not to get the baby down into the canal and have my contractions progress nicely by being up and about but that didn't happen. My body (3 minute apart contractions and the blood) made us feel like we should get to the hospital. Anyways, to continue the story... the nurse came back in around 6am and I hadn't progressed- still at a 4. Around 7:30am my doctor came to the hospital to check on me and STILL I hadn't progressed past 4 so she decided to break my water in hopes that that would get things moving again. By about 10am, the nurse re-examined me and even with my water broker, I STILL hadn't past 4. So, the suggestion was made that since its already been 10 hours since I started my labor contractions, we should start pitocin to keep the labor up a notch. Well, as you well know, pitocin also increases the intensity of labor and I was pretty tired and sore already. Although I was trying to avoid an epidural till later in the process, I was in quite a lot of pain already. So, I took the pitocin at 4/5cm dilated. Awhile later, I had eventually reached a true 5, then later a 5/6, further later a 6, etc. However, in the meantime, the baby was showing signs of stress. I was supposed to be switching off between various sitting/laying positions because of the epidural but the baby was not letting me move off my right side laying position. Every time I moved, the babies heart rate dropped and was in the danger level. So, I was stuck laying on my right side and it went completely numb. The nurse thought that perhaps the babies umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby and that's why I wasn't able to move off my right side. Additionally, the baby wasn't reacting well to the pitocin so I was taken off that as well and the nurse hoped that my contractions and labor would advance further on its own. By about 5pm on Wednesday, I had finally made it to 8cm dilated and 100% effaced but with the baby already stressed, it didn't appear that the baby would be able to withstand labor any further, and certainly couldn't withstand pushing when it came time. So, I was told that I was going to need a c-section. This was the last thing I wanted and in fact, I had been praying for a nice vaginal labor and delivery so I was completely bummed. I cried of course. It was very disappointing, especially after trying to labor for almost 20 hours already. By 5:45pm, I was being prepped for surgery. Just thinking about the whole ordeal makes me cry all over again. It was so disappointing. The only good thing was that at 6:22pm, our baby was born.

- story continues in next blog....