Little Jack has finally arrived! The whole thing was quite an ordeal and we are so thankful to be through it and holding our baby boy. I feel like I went through everything possible in this labor and none of it was on the "birth plan." We came into the hospital at 7:30am on Monday to start our induction because we weren't getting anywhere with labor starting on its own. We got the Cervidil at 9am and that was a 12 hour ripening process before they started the pitocin to create the real contractions. By 5pm I was getting some contractions of my own, but the were fairly mild and I had no problem breathing through them.
Around 9pm they started in with the pitocin because the Cervidil had dilated me to 1cm, which was an improvement over 0cm at the start. We wanted to start off on a low dose of pit, but one of our problems was that we had 6 shift changes during our labor, meaning that 6 nurses had different plans for our birth and it was hard to keep track of what was going on. The pitocin got administered a bit faster than we had discuss with the nurse who started us on it. By 10:30 I was having stronger contractions that were getting hard to ignore and it was getting pretty painful.
Our goal all along was to have as natural a birth experience as possible, so inducing and using pitocin were not part of what we wanted, but I gave up caring a while ago because I wanted to deliver the baby and not remain pregnant any longer! He was already 9 days late when we entered the hospital. We tried many of our laboring techniques from 10:30 until I was in a huge amount of pain around 2am. It was clear that we wouldn't be sleeping that night. I was only 3cm dilated at that point and the doctors were telling us that we had another 12 or more hours of labor to go before the pushing stage began. At that point I was in a lot of pain and knew that I didn't want to go through that kind of pain every 2 minutes for another 12 hours and then try to push. It was a little disappointing, but I asked for the epidural. That turned out to be a great decision for me. It was very very comforting to get the pain relief after about 4 hours of the pitocin contractions. Dan and I actually slept a little through the rest of the night and the pitocin levels got raised and raised because the baby was doing very well and they wanted me to dilate effectively.
By 6am I was dilated to 6cm and my doctor showed up! I wasn't expecting to see her since there are 17 doctors in her practice and whoever is at the hospital that day delivers, so the chance of getting my doctor were very slim. I was relieved to see a familiar face and she assured me that she would be delivering my baby that day since she was on shift until 7pm that night. We called up the parents about our progress and everyone was excited. From there the dilation slowed down and it took until 12 noon to get near 9cm, but then they assured us that we were close to pushing! Yay, it was almost over. The pain of the contractions did return a few times and man was it intense. Sometimes with the pitocin drug there isn't actually a break between contractions and you have one long contraction, with some higher peaks for hours on end. Brutal.
Finally by 2pm we were given the green light to start pushing and we were so excited because we thought we were an hour or so away from meeting the baby. The parents were in the waiting room and were itching to meet the little one.
So we pushed and pushed and pushed. We pushed for 3 hours and made very little progress in getting the baby out. At that point I was pretty miserable because of the exhausting pushing efforts and I was feeling a lot of the non-stop contractions as they had let the epidural wear off. They thought that I was making a very good effort in my pushing, but pretty much nothing was moving the baby. At that point at 5pm my doctor recommended a C-section. That was very disappointing, considering the 30 hours of being at the hospital and going through all of the stages of labor and feeling so close. Baby was doing great, but he was stuck.
We finally got into surgery at 6:20 and the family had been in the waiting room for quite some time now. I was feeling pretty terrible with lots of contractions and I was so done mentally with feeling them because I knew baby wasn't coming out, no matter how strong the contractions were. The surgery was horrible for me with a lot of discomforts and crazy full body shaking that I couldn't stop and throwing things up, but medically it went off perfectly and just in time for my own doctor to perform it. Jackson made his first big scream at 6:38pm after all of that. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear him and that was wonderful.
I got to see his face for literally 2 seconds before he was moved to the nursery for testing and Dan went with him. I was spent emotionally and physically, but the baby was out.
In the recovery area I finally got to hold and see my son. He really calmed me down from all of the after affects of the surgery. He is so perfect. It turned out that he was stuck because he was "sunnyside up" as he was trying to come out, meaning that his face was up towards my front instead of the proper position with his fact towards my back (this only happens for 5% of babies). Also, he was a pound bigger than we had thought he would be (7lb, 15oz, 22" long), so that combination left him pretty stuck and I'm glad that we were able to get him out safely. The grandparents were able to sneak in for a quick visit with him before getting booted out by the nurses, so that was fantastic and they looked so happy. Overall I wouldn't change a thing about our long and varied labor because it brought us a healthy baby. I need to download all of the amazing pictures that we took as soon as I get the chance. He really is a doll, but I'm sure no parent is objective about that. Thanks for all of your prayers and love during this time. Look for photos in the near future.
