It was Monday, June 1st when I went in for my 41 week check up. Evan was showing no signs of coming on his own, so we set up an induction date for the following week. During my pregnancy, my blood pressure was considered "high" but not out of normal range; however, with this appointment, it was a little too high and I was told to monitor it the following day and if it got too high, to call my doctor and I would be sent to the hospital to deliver my baby. TALK. ABOUT. TERRIFYING.
The next morning, I just didn't feel right. I had an extremely awful headache and couldn't get rid of it. It was then I knew that we would heading to the hospital that day. Around noon I called Matt to come home from work. Since I wasn't in labor and was completely panicked, I cleaned our house, repacked all of the hospital bags, took almost an hour long shower, and then blow dried and straightened my hair. After trying to calm my nerves, I called my OB and was instructed to head to the hospital to be induced for gestational hypertension. We were having a baby... soon.
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| The day we went to the hospital |
I always said I didn't want an induction, I had wanted things to happen on their own. I am a person who doesn't handle change well and an induction was NOT in my birth plan. I cried on the way to the hospital, at the time I thought it was because things weren't going my way, but looking back, it was because I was terrified. Matt didn't say anything, but I know he had to have been scared, too.
When we got to the hospital around 3:30 and hooked up to check on the baby, his heart rate was high, so it took about 30 minutes of IV fluid to get him to settle down to get a better judge on how he was actually doing. My OB and I had already discussed a plan on how I would be induced. She knew I didn't want an induction, but even more, knew I really did not want a cesarean (and truthfully, she didn't want to do one), so she made sure that every step was taken to make me labor slowly and as much on my own as possible.
I was not dilated or thinned out at all, and Evan had not dropped (meaning my body was not at all ready for labor), so we had to start very slow. Around 5:30pm I had Cervidil placed. Cervidil is inserted to ripen the cervix in preparation for childbirth. It sat for 12 hours. About 2 hours after it was inserted, contractions began. They became painful within 3 hours and I couldn't sleep. The next morning at 5:30, when it came out, I had only dilated to a 1, so a folley bulb was placed and I was started on a very low dose of Pitocin. I won't gross you out with the details of the bulb, but I will say that it wasn't comfortable and it took it 6 hours to get me dilated. With the bulb, my contractions became very regular and were hitting the top of the pain charts, which was great because that meant that Evan would be coming soon.
The bulb came out around 11:30am and then my water was manually broken around noon. If I thought the contractions were strong before, they were killer after my water broke. With the bulb out, I had the freedom to move around. I used the time to wash my face, brush my teeth (4 times), fix my hair, and throw some water-proof eye make up on. I walked around, rocked with Matt, and tried to get through the contractions as best as I could. I had planned on an epidural-free birth, but when the nurse told me I still had 5-8 hours left of labor (it ended up being 11 hours later), I decided that I needed one or I wouldn't be able to push since I hadn't slept at all. Around 2:00 I got my epidural.
Around 11:30pm my nurse came and checked me. I was fully dilated. My OB had me labor down for an hour, which helped tremendously. At 12:20 my nurse came in and wanted me to do a couple practice pushes to see how well I could do it and if Evan would be coming out easily. I pushed once and she told me to stop because he was coming fast and my doctor needed time to get there. At 12:45 we began actively pushing and mine and Matt's sweet 8 pound 1 ounce baby entered our world at 1:18am Thursday, June 4th. I fell in love all over again with those first cries.
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| Photo credit: Jessica Ebeler Photography |
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| Photo credit: Jessica Ebeler Photography |
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