Bryan is Here!!!!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Birth Story Part 2 - The Induction

So Seriously, I started this post almost 3 months ago!  I really need to get into a better blogging habit. If you need a refresher, here's Part 1.

OK so where we left off, A and I were headed to the hospital for our scheduled induction.  Something I would like to note, on the way there, A and I were discussion our predictions for what was going to happen.  A predicted that I would respond really well to the pitocin, and we'd have a baby by noon.  I figured that knowing my luck, we'd be lucky if we had a baby by 4, and that I guessed we wouldn't be done before dinner.

We arrived at the hospital 8pm and went through all the initial questions.  (A little sidebar, asking me if I feel safe at home while my husband is sitting right next to me seems a little counter productive doesn't it?  No I'm terrified of my husband and I'm going to tell you all about it while he's in the room monitoring my every word...Riiiiight)  About 8:30 our pastor arrived to spend a little time with us and pray with us before we got the pitocin going.  I have to tell you how touched I was by this.  The pastor and our church family have been just AMAZING through all of this.  He called me on Wednesday wondering if we would like him to come by and what time.  He wanted to be sure he was there before they started the meds so we could pray over the entire process.  It was nearly 10pm before he left.  I felt a little bad that he stayed so long, but I was really glad he did.  I have to confess I was more nervous about the whole process than I wanted to admit at the time.  Finally about 10:30 pm, the nurses got my Pitocin started, and our doula (we'll call her Mandy) arrived around 11pm.  Now it just so happened that Mandy also happened to be a overnight L&D nurse at the hospital where we delivered, and happened to be the instructor for our childbirth class (which is how we met her)  We got lucky that she was already scheduled to work Thursday night, so she was there with us for the entire induction, labor, and delivery.

Anyway, A slept pretty well most of the night on the oh-so-comfortable daddy chair (do you sense my sarcasm?  The poor guy, the chair laid out into a bed, but was about 6 inches too short for his 6'2" frame.  Now I on the other hand did not sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time.  I had to wear a blood pressure cuff that was going off every 15-30 minutes, plus Mandy was coming in every so often to up my pitocin a bit.  So I rested, but I won't say I slept.  Finally about 6:30 am, I gave up trying to sleep and got up to go to the bathroom.  Mandy was in the room when I got up, but had to go get things ready for shift change so she told me she'd be back shortly to hook me back up to the monitors.  We had been to the hospital enough times that I told her to take her time, I could get the fetal monitors plugged back in, just to turn off the blood pressure cuff so it didn't go nuts.  So after I went to the bathroom, I plugged everything back in, Sat down on the bed and raised the back so I could comfortably sit up.  I had sat back on the too far, and my butt was right on where the bed folds. As the top was raising I felt a sharp jab in my belly, and lowered the bed back down to scoot down a bit when all the sudden, my water broke!  I just started giggling uncontrollably and A was so confused!  But it TICKLED!  I called to the desk to let the Nurses know, and they must have been in shift change rounds, because it took another 15 minutes or so for them to come in and help me change. Luckily I had been sitting right on the big absorbent pad when it broke, so there wasn't much of a mess, but every time I moved I could feel more fluid so I just sat and waited (giggling the whole time).  The nurses thought I was crazy!  They said they have NEVER had someone say it tickled.  What can I say I'm an odd duck.  So they got everything cleaned up, changed the bed, and checked me and at 7am, I was 3cm dilated.  So far labor had been pretty easy, and I was feeling good about getting through this.  I mean after all my water had broken on its own!  How many inductions does that happen in?  Mandy told us that she had only seen it a handful of times, and as an overnight nurse, she's seen a lot of inductions!  (Our hospital starts inductions between 8pm and 12am preferably) My BP had been pretty stable all night, not great, but not scary high even during contractions, and my body was reacting really well to the Pitocin so we were feeling pretty good.

Next: Part 3 - Labor and Delivery