I suppose there are a number of days that have changed my live irrevocably; however, maybe none so dramatically as a few weeks ago when my son was born. So as to not be too graphic for public viewing, I'll just give you a few of the highlights of my labor:
Thursday - I went in on a Thursday night to get the whole induction process started. I was only dilated to 1 cm (as I had been for several weeks). After all night on cervidil, I was still only dilated to 1cm, though I did begin having contractions during the night. These contractions were different than the others I had felt. They were, for the first time, time-able. Though they didn't hurt much, they had a very distinct beginning and were about 3.5 to 5 minutes apart. I called the nurse in sometime in the early morning to ask if we'd still need to begin the pitocin at 6am. We did.
Friday - The nurse got me up around 5 am to shower and get ready for the induction. They began me on pitocin around 6am. My OB came in around 8 or 8:30 to break my water. (I was STILL at 1cm.) She said it was probably a good thing we were inducing, because there seemed to be a bit of miconium in the amniotic fluid, which can signal the baby is distressed. My contracts really strengthened after that. I finally asked for the epidural and some IV medication. I couldn't tell that the IV meds did much, but I'm A HUGE fan of the epidural!!! I could finally relax a bit. I think maybe I had dilated to a "2+" around that time. After the epidural is when things seemed to begin progressing. We were all excited when my OB checked me at 1:30pm and announced that I had progressed to 5cm. I knew it was common to progress 0.5 to 1cm an hour from there, so my family began taking bets on what time the baby would arrive - most guessed that night sometime.
Friday afternoon - Somewhere around 2:30pm I announced to the nurse that I was beginning to feel some pressure. She said I was due to be checked again at 3pm, so we'd just wait for that. At 3pm, the nurse checked me and announced that I was complete (fully dilated to 10cm, fully effaced and ready to push)!! At that point, we were just waiting on the doctor. The nurses had me do a short "test push" and determined that they didn't think it would take long for the baby to arrive once I started pushing. Somewhere approaching 4pm the doctor was scrubbed up and ready for me. We pushed through three contractions (nine pushes or so), ten minutes or less, and were able to meet our baby boy face-to-face at 4:06pm.
What a rush! The room felt like a party atmosphere. My son was on my chest, and I could see him for the first time. What a miracle! What a perfect, perfect gift from God!
1 comment:
Congratulations, Krista!!
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