The Birth Story - Part III

So we got the epidural, took great on the right side, but the left, not nearly as tingly or numb, so they turned me on my left side to let gravity do its work. After a while it felt more numb, but still not as numb as my right side, but I'm not one to complain so I figured 'okay, this is as good as it's going to get, I'm not in immense pain, let's keep this game going'.

After the epirdural was in for a bit, my doctor came back and broke my water - at 12:25 (lunch) cst. Let me just say...I am SO GLAD that my water did not break in public, or at home even because DUDE, there is NO MERCY when it comes to water breakage! It is like the great floods! And that was just lying down! And apparently it just kept coming out - hm just like the books said! Eek!

sidenote: I'm glad that I could not see this happening by the way. I would have grossed myself out I'm sure. But the fluid was clear which is a good thing (no baby poop in it - shew!)

sidenote: the water breakage didn't hurt a bit

After that, the contractions came on a bit more (not that I could feel much aside from some pressure)

Oh, and I made quadruple sure with my nurse that I was in a good labor pattern and that getting the epi wouldn't stall it out - very worried about that! She assured me that all systems were go.

Anywho, contractions coming and going as they should - my doctor came back and checked on me at 3:30, and I was between a 9-10 cms. He suggested a bit of 'laboring down' before pushing, which is letting your body naturally move the baby down in the pelvis after 10cms.

So we gave that a go.

Then at about 6p (I think...I know my parents were able to be there and they got in around 5:30 and we were still chillin' in the room waiting to dilate more)...my dr came back (shift change - I got to meet the new OB for the night - awesome lady - took a-mazing care of me) and he suggested we could push for 15 minutes, see how I do, and either keep pushing or stop for a bit.

My nurse and I were confident that we could start pushing and then reevaluate.

So push we did - for an hour and a half-ish - and amidst another shift change lol.

Trying to get the baby to move down - and oddly, I really enjoyed the pushing phase even though it didn't result in too much, it felt good to try to move things along at our pace. And the pushing wasn't too hard (don't hate me), lots of visualization of my ab muscles working overtime, and Jillian Michaels in my head :)

Then for some reason, my contractions slowed down with the pushing, like from 2 to 3 minutes, to 8 to 10 minutes apart.

sidenote: everything happens for a reason - and our baby is amazing and already was so perceptive

Since I was adament about doing my best to get this baby out sans c-section, and I guess the medical team thought it was a-go, the nurse got orders for pitocin to try to speed up the contractions so we could make more progress with the pushing. hard to progress when you can only push every 10ish minutes.

I was okay with it after I kept asking 'you are SURE that this isn't going to stall things, you are SURE it isn't going to make me sick, you are SURE it isn't going to hurt our baby." All systems go yet again.

So we started pitocin and the doctor came in to check me. Apparently LC's head was turned the wrong way (my timing may be off here, she may have told us that at some point earlier before the pitocin started but saw no reason to not push anymore), so we took a rest from pushing and did some different (pretzel) positions to try to get his head to turn.

After that, we made another attempt to push (yeah my timing is off, basically we pushed w no pitocin, took a break while she tried to turn his head, pushed with pitocin).

Then it was time for another pushing session. I tried for another hour or so with pitocin and more regular contractions.

No dice.

Then the doctor came in again to check his head position.

As she was trying to move it (or was feeling around, I'm not sure), apparently his cord slipped (cord prolapse is what it is called), and that meant that his cord would come out first if we were to continue. That it could compress and that would be not good.

She looked me in the eyes and said 'we're going to have to do an emergency c-section, we have to get this baby delivered very quickly"

I shook my head okay, she put a little node up near his head to get his heartbeat (or something like that), and swarms (and I mean SWARMS) of people flooded our little hospital room.

More later, my little man is stirring :)