Here's to hoping this post isn't forever long...
Up until going into labor, being 5 days overdue, I was comfortable. Not miserable at all but I'm a mostly easy going person.
Prior to going into labor, I was just barely a 1cm and only 50%-60% effaced so needless to say, I thought I was going to have to be induced. At my last appointment, (40 wks) my midwife offered to schedule an induction (but not for another week;41 wks), but I declined because I wanted to give my body some more time. For the most part, I was comfortable and not miserable at all for being 40 weeks pregnant.
It all started Friday night (04-24-15). It was around 8pm and we just finished eating Chipotle and I was having these constant annoying pains in my abdomen/low abdomen. It literally felt like bad gas pains, like the Chipotle was going right through me. I tried using the restroom but that didn't stop the pains. I started putting Hanley to bed, doing our usual bedtime routine and the pains started changing. They started spacing out but never really intensified. Just annoying pains. I went to the top of the stairs and yelled down to Michael that I thought the pains were the beginning of contractions...Eeek! At this point, I was already 3 days overdue, but still slightly in denial. I called my mom and she was asking me questions and I said "I don't know, they just feel like cramps" and she said "Melissa, you're in labor!" Haha you'd think I'd never done this before. lol So I took a shower and they died off for a little while.
When I decided to go to bed, they came back. I didn't get much sleep at all, I saw every hour of the night. They were around 10-12 minutes apart, which I knew was way too far apart to do anything about just yet. Not the worst pain but nothing I was able to really sleep through.
Hanley got up at 7:30am Saturday morning (04-25-15) and the contractions literally stopped at that time too... Michael took Hanley downstairs and let me sleep until around 10am or so. We stayed home all day, I didn't want to go anywhere just in case something decided to happen. I was having contractions sporadically throughout the day, nothing timeable though. Then 8pm rolled around again and they started right back up, about 8-10 minutes apart and much more painful than the night before. Michael put Hanley to bed because I just couldn't pull it off without her knowing I was in pain. Around 11pm the contractions were more like 6-7 minutes apart and I decided to call the midwife on call. She said I should wait for the contractions to be around 3-5 minutes apart. No thanks! I was planning on going to the hospital when contractions were around 5-6 minutes apart. So I laid on the couch and I told Michael I was giving it another hour, if contractions were the same or closer together, we were just gonna go in.
I was in contact with my brother since he was going to come pick Hanley up to take her back to his house to stay. Midnight rolled around and they might not have gotten any closer together but they were so incredibly painful. I couldn't walk or talk through them. I called my brother and he was on his way to get Hanley. I started rounding up all our stuff to leave while Michael took a quick shower. We got Hanley out of bed when my brother got here and she was so pitiful. She was crying and was so confused. We finally got her situated in his car with her tablet and she was good to go.
We got to the hospital and we got put in an OB Triage room to be checked out. They hooked the monitors to my belly and we waited for a doctor to come check me. When a doctor came in, he said right away that he was admitting me before ever checking me. He said the baby's heart rate dropped too far during a contraction and also because I was 5 days overdue at that point. He then checked me but I was only 2cm dilated. Good grief!
We got moved to a labor and delivery room and I got hooked up to my IV's to wait on the anesthesiologist for my epidural. Michael and I both actually knew our nurse, have known her for around 20 years, so we caught up and chatted awhile about various things. The epidural got administered very quickly and I was in sweet relief!! Soon after the epidural the midwife broke my water to try to speed my labor up. It was in between 3-4am sometime and our nurse and midwife left to let us get some sleep.
I woke up around 6 and the nurse and midwife said the babys heart rate kept dropping a few times but nothing too bad that I needed oxygen or intervention, they just increased my fluids. I got checked again and wasn't progressing so they wanted to start pitocin but couldn't until babys heart rate stopped dipping.
For the 9 months I was pregnant, I saw a midwife and planned on having a midwife delivery but they actually didn't supply a midwife at the hospital on Sundays because they were short staffed and the other midwives were still in training; the midwife on call, that was treating me in the hospital was off duty as of 8am so I had to end up being delivered by the doctor on call but there wasn't anything I could do about it, oh well.
I called our moms around 7am and they arrived around 8am. The increased fluids helped steady the babys heart rate so they started the pitocin. I was only dilated to a 3 or 4cm at this point.
The epidural made me so incredibly numb, I had no control over my legs and lower half, I couldn't feel a thing. Thankfully around 10am the epidural started to ease up as I started being able to feel when I was having a contraction (not the pain) and could move my legs around. They checked me again around 10:30am and I was dilated to a 5cm. Then as the next hour passed, I could feel increasing pressure and just felt like I needed checked again. By 11:30am I was fully dilated and effaced and ready to go! So I went from a 5cm to 10 cm in an hour! The nurse had already set up the room for delivery when she heard me mentioning the pressure increasing so she called the doctor in and I started the practice pushes.
In between the practice pushes the doctor on call was texting on his phone, which I really thought was kind of comical...
Several practice pushes later, it was time for the real deal. The doctor got suited up and everyone got ready and 20 minutes later I had Conrad River Nemitz, a beautiful 7lb 1oz (20.5in long) baby boy laying on my chest! I never got to experience the baby coming out and being placed on me because Hanley pooped while still in my belly so they had to take her right away to make sure she didn't ingest any of it. Also, during pushing, I could actually feel what I was doing and feel the difference between the pushes and actually got to feel his head pop out (too much...??) ...because with Hanley I was way too numbed up and didn't feel a thing!
Also, Conrad came out super cone head and had several really red areas on his face because he came out face up when he should've came out face down. The little guy refused to turn but all his color is perfect now!
I feel so lucky to have such great labor experiences with both my babies because I've read how bad it can be. I've never had any tearing, or stitches and could go without any pain medicine afterwards because its really just never been that bad for me.
I still can't believe we are now a family of 4. These two kids are the best decisions I've ever made and I feel like I was meant to be a mother!
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