I was 40 weeks five days and was scheduled to induce at 40 weeks 6 days so we had been doing everything to get labor started: chiropractic, foods, accupuncturist, sex, and walking. I had been having contractions for a couple weeks but just false starts.
Michael and I took Masa for a walk at 4pmand my contractions felt strong. I forced myself to walk for an hour hoping they would rev up. By the time we got home they were consistent but neither of us wanted to get too excited so we watched a movie. Continued strong contractions.
After the movie I decided to take a shower because I heard that if you take a shower and your contractions speed up it's real labor. They were about five minutes apart at that point. While in the shower I had to actually use my breathing techniques to deal with the sensation so I thought that was a good sign.
When I got out we timed again and we were four minutes apart. I decided to take a bath to see if we could stay home a bit longer before heading to the hospital.
In the bath we realized they were two minutes apart and one minute long. Michael flew into gear packing up the car.
By the time I got out of the bath I was needing michaels help to stand during the waves. We got out to the car and I told myself the car ride was going to help my labor and help me dilate. I think it did!
When we arrived at Ob triage I was five centimeters dilated. It was 10 pm.
My doula and doc arrived and we got a room with a tub. I was happy in the tub for about an hour. I love water! Then when I got out of the tub they checked me and I was nine and a half centimeters dilated! Everyone was so happy. Then they checked my vitals and everyone got really serious and all these extra docs came in. My blood pressure was 180 over 110. I had severe preeclampsia and they were afraid I was going to begin seizuring. They started me on a magnesium drip to help keep me safe but it made me so tired and severely slowed down my contractions. I was pushing by this point but it was hard because of the magnesium. Then they began a pit IV because I wasso slowed down. I pushed and pushed and nothing seemed to happen. I pushed like this for about eight hours. My doc broke my bag of waters to try to get baby to move but that really increased my pain in pushing. We were trying all types of positions and Michael was not sure what to think about all the interventions.
I was convinced the baby was stuck( turned out to be true). But my doc knew I really wanted a natural birth so she continued to encourage me to push. After a few more hours they decided to give me an epidural to see if I could relax and then pick up the pushing again.
I had a spiritual experience during the epidural where I forgave everyone I had hard feelings against and where I realized I really needed to be flexible about my birth and my life.
The head of L and D came in and checked me out only to find baby was stuck. We asked him for more time to push. He agreed to an hour and a half. That was the most painful part. My doc was really pushing and kneading in my vagina to make room and my doula kept making me move into crazy positions. So when the Ob came back and said cesarian I was soooo relieved. That was about three p.m. The next day after labor had started. Then Michael and I went to surgery and when baby was born Michael held him and then put him on my chest for skin to skin. Baby never had any distress. Which surprised everyone. My doc said she had never seen anyone work as hard as me which may have been an exaggeration but made me proud.
It was a lovely birth. Recovery has been HARD but it's all in the game.
