Birth Story

Gosh, time sure flies when you have a newborn!

Props to all the mom bloggers out there-I am not quite sure how you do it!!

On Monday, October 5th I went in to the OB for a followup after the exciting visit to Triage the previous Friday. My blood pressure wasn't better and baby was looking big, so they scheduled me for an induction at 8pm that evening. Wow-that is certainly a weird feeling, knowing that you only have a potential 6 hours or so left of going to the hospital to meet your new baby! It was very weird and exciting at the same time. I was excited to meet our new baby, yet scared what was to come!

So I went to HyVee and bought food for our last meal, since I knew it was going to be a while since I got to eat again!

At 8pm we headed to the hospital and they started me on a medication to help ripen my cervix. They started it at 10 pm after being admitted, monitored and all that jazz and then they would do it again at 2 am. Scott and I watched the big Vikings vs Packers game while we waited at the hospital-Vikings win! :o)

The nurse gave me some ambien to sleep and I had a great night until they woke me up at 4 am to start the Pitocin drip to get the contractions going. It started out fine, I could handle the contractions until about 10 a.m. The nurse asked me if I wanted anything for pain and I kept saying I wanted to wait, but eventually she gave me an analgesic in my IV which was totally weird. It made me feel all loopy and sleepy, but I wasn't really sleeping and I was still feeling the pain. About an hour later we called for the epidural and it went in without a problem. It was nice to have the pain relief, but it was not nice to feel like you are paralyzed from the chest down! My legs felt so heavy and I could barely move. So I labored for about 6 more hours, and every time the nurse or OB checked me I still hadn't made any progress. I think the whole time I was in labor I never made it past 2 cm dilated. At the end the contractions got really bad and I was very uncomfortable even with the epidural. The pitocin was cranked up as high as it could go and they were just coming one after another and there wasn't really anything I could do about it!

So at 6 pm the doctor came in and said we were going to do a C-section. She said I wasn't progressing and the baby was still doing fine and they didn't want to wait until everything was not fine to do one. So, that was that. I called my mom and cried and cried because this just wasn't how I wanted it to be. I was really disappointed.

They got me all ready for surgery and wheeled me into the operating room and it felt like just 2 minutes until Michael was born at 7:15 pm. He cried right away and I could see him getting checked out by the nurses on the warming table. They got him all bundled up and Scott brought him over for me to see and he was the cutest baby I had ever seen! I knew right then we would name him Michael and he was just perfect.

Scott went with them to take him up to the nursery to get checked out while they were finishing the surgery and then Scott met me in the C-section recovery room. When Michael was done in the nursery they brought him to me and I got to hold him for the first time. They kept telling me to try and sleep a little bit, but I just wanted to hold him!

All in all, the whole labor and delivery was about the exact opposite of what I wanted and expected. At first I was pretty sad about how it all turned out but now that I am home with Michael I am just so happy he is here and we are both safe and sound-and that is the most important thing.