Lots of dark hair.
I know how many of you like labor and delivery stories, so here is mine. Probably the most writing I do in a blog post is labor and delivery stories. :)I start contracting regularly about 1 a.m. Sunday morning: 10-15 minutes apart. I can't sleep so at 5:30 a.m. I get out of bed and clean the house and get stuff ready to go. I guess all the activity made the contractions closer. At 6 a.m. they got to be 5 minutes apart and I time them for an hour. I tell Nate to get ready. I sit down to contact some people telling them I will go in anytime, and they SLOW down! I was so mad. So I got up and started working again, mopping, vacuuming, climbing stairs, but they never get back to 5 minutes apart. They hurt real bad and last a good minute each though. So I send Nate to church with the boys and Nate comes home after the first hour, and we go ahead and go to the hospital 11ish with contractions about 5-10 minutes apart. I didn't ever have regular contractions with Dallin, so I thought it would be ok.
The resident doctor checks me and I am 90% and 4 cm dilated, so they decide they could admit me. I make sure to tell them that if they send me home, I am scheduled for an induction the next day. I think that helped convince them to keep me. :) They weren't busy, and the resident said he could "use some action around here anyway".
So I get admitted and they put me on low doses of Pitocin to get contractions closer and more regular. That sort of works but they decide to break my water to get it going faster even. I tell them to be sure to call the anesthesiologist because that is when labor gets intense. The nurse understood. He might have called her before, I don't really know what happens outside of my hospital room, but it would have been only minutes before he broke my water if he did. She was coming from her house, 30-45 minutes away. Why he was in such a hurry to break my water, I don't know! He actually wanted to do it when he checked me the first time and saw that I was dilated to a 4, but he is just a resident and has to follow a doctor's orders. I didn't care for all the doctors orders, it wasn't my doc. They seemed too complicated compared to what I experienced before.
As expected contractions get intense. I get some drug to "take the edge off the pain", which it seems to have no effect on, however, it does make me see double and feel loopy. That in combination with pain makes me feel like a crazy person. I was so exhausted that even though I was having killer contractions I felt like I could actually doze off between them. There is nothing as frustrating as knowing that you can't actually doze off because you'd be feeling stabbing pain in another minute.
I was at a 5 when he broke my water and in less than an hour, I am fully dilated. The resident doc had said earlier when talking about breaking my water that going from a 4-10 usually takes about 3 hours. With Dallin in maybe took 2, so I thought OK it should be fine.
The anesthesiologist gets there in a half hour, but has to wait for lab results to do anything still. I think the sympathetic nurse fibbed and said I was a 9 just so I could still get the drugs at all. I could feel her head in my pelvis as I sat forward to get the injection in my back. It felt it would be impossible to sit like I was supposed to. She does the intrathecal injection--no time for an epidural to kick in--literally minutes before I have to push, which is literally minutes before Ashlyn is born. The drugs didn't kick in until my first push. Thank goodness it kicked in then. Pushing is the scary part for me. Glad it only took 3 contractions to push her out.
So there is my story. Worst of the three labors. What I learned?
Be more aggressive. I could have said, "Call the anesthesiologist WELL BEFORE you break my water. I know how my body works." There are a list of things I felt uncomfortable with that I could have spoken up about. Would have had them break my water before Pitocin actually, since I know it works for me--of course with the anesthesiologist standing by. :) I wouldn't take the drug "to take the edge off" either. Doesn't help enough, and the side effects probably make it worse.
I also learned, I probably could do natural labor and delivery if I had to. I would survive. I won't attempt it, but good to know it wouldn't kill me.
Michaela snapped some pictures so I will be sure to get some of those and post them soon, or take some of my own.
