Wednesday, April 18th marked 5 days past my due date and it was the day chosen by our doctor (with our input) to induce. My mom came to town on Tuesday and we ran a bunch of errands. I was still feeling really good and just knew that this baby was not going to make his/her appearance any time soon. We got a ton of stuff done and got manicures and pedicures and then went to Turtles for an awesome dinner out. I slept pretty well that night and we woke up bright and early to head to the hospital. I ate a hearty breakfast of oatmeal and scrambled eggs, knowing it would probably be a long time before I could eat again.
We were checked in and the started the pitocin pretty much right away. We quickly discovered that our sweet, sweet nurse was actually a distant cousin of Tim's. Those Browns are everywhere!!! The day progressed rather well and lots of visitors were in and out including a surprise visit from my sister Heather and her 10 day old little man, Rowan. It was fantastic to get to finally meet the little stinker in person! I was adamant that I didn't want ANYONE (besides Tim) in the room for anything - the delivery or any of the checks leading up to it.
The doctor came in and checked on me a few times throughout the day and was happy with the progress I was making. At around 5 cm dilated I decided it was time for an epidural. I had tried various positions and the pain was quickly increasing and talk about sweet relief!!! I could still feel everything, but it was much, much more manageable. Unfortunately the epidural only took to one side and I was feeling back labor, which I hadn't had at all before. They had me laying on different sides and in different positions in hopes that the baby would shift and I would get some relief from the back labor. After a while they decided that the epidural wasn't doing its' job and they gave me a bolus. This helped immensely. The doctor came in to check me a while later, at about 4:00 and I was at 6-7 cm dilated. When he came back an hour later we were all shocked to hear that I was dilated to a full 10! I kicked everyone out and they prepared me to start pushing.
At first the pushing was a little hard, I had a difficult time figuring out if I was pushing in the right place, but within 15 minutes the doctor could see the baby's head and I was feeling a bit more pain, which helped me feel where I needed to push. I was feeling really, really good and just knew we would be meeting our little baby in a just a short time.
An hour and a half later I was still pushing and making no progress. It was the most frustrating thing in the entire world. I was working so hard and we were trying every different pushing position possible and I wasn't getting anywhere. At this point the doctor decided that we needed to use the vacuum. I was a little surprised to see that it looked like a toilet plunger, but I knew that that sweet little contraption was going to help me get this baby past my pubic bone and out into the world.
I pushed with every ounce of energy I had, but after 3 attempts at using the vacuum the baby was just not getting to where it needed to be. Tim, the doctor and my nurse were all cheering me on and telling me I could do it and I just knew that I could. At this point I saw the look of concern on the doctor's face. He expressed concern that if it was this difficult to get the baby's head out, that his/her shoulders could pose an even bigger problem and then we would really be in trouble because the head would be out, but the shoulders wouldn't. He decided to give me one more chance to push and if I didn't make any progress then we were going to have to do a c-section.
My entire pregnancy I talked and talked and talked about how the only thing I really cared about was that I did not want to have a c-section. I just had this idea set in my mind that I wanted to do the work of pushing this baby out of me. I just really wanted that experience and felt like it was an extremely important part of being a woman. I must have jinxed myself because after 12 hours of labor and over 2 hours of pushing, I was headed to the O.R. for an emergency c-section. I was devastated.
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