Birth Story

I checked into the hospital at 5 pm on September 15th, 2009 to start the induction.

To induce, there are a couple of things they had to do. First, my cervix was completely closed and hard... no dilation, no effacement... so they had to soften it up before they gave me the drug to really start labor. There are 2 drugs they can use. The first one, Cervadil, is what I had been told to ask for. The other one, Cytotec, is not meant to be used for inducing labor and it has a lot of serious risks involved.

After the cervix is "ripened" they use a drug called Pitocin to make the uterus contract and eventually push the baby out. I hated the thought of using this. Natural contractions slowly build, plateau, then slowly release. Contractions with Pit are all or nothing, hard and strong throughout. I wanted to do this drug free and the thought of relaxing and breathing through punching contractions was daunting. My hope was that once my cervix had softened, my body would go into labor naturally and I could avoid the Pitocin all together.

My OB wanted to use Cytotec from the very beginning. I told her I was not comfortable with that and wanted Cervadil instead. She advised me against this and told me that in her experience the Cervadil didn't always work and she had much better luck with the Cytotec. I told her I still wanted to try the Cervadil and she agreed to start with that and see what happened.

At 6 pm, the Cervadil was placed.

I cramped all night with small contractions on top of the constant cramping. It was very uncomfortable and my back really started to hurt as well. I found out later the night nurse forgot to put the mattress on the bed so I had been on the hard delivery surface all night... thanks a lot!!!

The next morning, my OB came to check me to see how my cervix was doing... I thought for sure it was softened and I had made some sort of progress after how uncomfortable I had been. Nope... still rock hard and completely closed.

My options were to try the Cytotec and see what happens or try the Pit. My OB said in her experience, Pit contractions against an unripened cervix didn't do a whole lot. Either I would contract for the day, not progress and have to do it all again the next night and day or my water would break, still not progress, and end up with a c-section (CS).

I chose to talk it over with my doula to see what she thought. She did a bit of research and found an example of a mom who did a night of Cerv, a day of Pit, a night of Cerv, a day of Pit with no change... then on the 3rd night she did Cytotec and her body was thrown into natural labor and she didn't have to do any more Pit. She naturally delivered the next day.

So, I decided to go for the Cytotec that day with the hopes of going into labor and avoiding the Pitocin entirely. AND IT WORKED!!! I got a dose at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm... when the nurse came in at 10pm to give me my next dose, she could tell I was already laboring and didn't need anymore.

My husband didn't get there until around 7pm... he had worked that day and came to the hospital after he had showered... and my mom had been with me all day and was very helpful. Since I already had someone there supporting me, I put off calling my doula to come to the hospital because she has 2 young kiddos and I wanted her to be able to put them to bed before she came...

The rest of the story is pieced together from what I remember and what the doula told me...

According to my doula, I called her at 8pm to tell her that my contractions were increasing in intensity. I told her I didn't know if they were doing anything or not, but apparently I had to stop and breathe through a contraction while we were on the phone. She was there by 9:30pm.

At 10pm, the nurse came in with the dose of Cytotec... even though I was only dilated to a 1 (maybe), the contractions were increasing in such a way that the nurses thought that the Cytotec had kicked me into labor. They decided to wait before giving me another dose. My contractions were 2-3 minutes apart by then. Even though I was barely dilated, my cervix had softened. We sent my husband home around 10pm because we thought it was still going to be a while and we wanted him to get some rest...

I labored until midnight on a birthing ball and bending over the bed... I breathed, swayed and moaned through my contractions. I remember thinking that I wasn't sure if I could do this for another 12 hours and I remember the folks in the room laughing with me as I chastised myself for going with out pain meds... I said things like "I am an idiot!" and "What was I thinking?"

Then they checked me a little after midnight: I was at a 5! That was 4 cm in 2 hours!!! According to my doula, I got another surge of energy and resolve at this point because I knew the contractions were making progress. My mom called my husband to tell him that this baby might be born sooner than we had anticipated. Then I labored in the tub for a while which my doula said seemed to help me relax.

A little after 1am I got back on the ball again. My doula said I seemed to really follow my body and would rise up off of the ball during contractions, lean over the bed, and sway my hips. She said I was definitely in the labor "zone."

Although I didn't really want to know how far I was dilated my doula said she was pretty sure she heard the nurse mumble 7 around 2am. By this time, my husband had returned and was really in the thick of things with me. I sat at the bottom of the bed and he sat on a chair on front of me. During contractions I would stand up, bend forward and lean into him... I remember us locking arms and him supporting my weight as I pushed forward against him... I remember being very pleasantly surprised by this since he had told me very early on in my pregnancy that he didn't think he would be able to handle being in there.

Between 2 and 5am, labor progressed. My doula said it was a hard for her to follow the usual cues that tell her where a woman is in the labor process:

"You were doing so incredibly well at one point I thought, 'this seems like it could be transition, but it just can't be transition because she is doing so well!' And the contractions didn't seem to follow quite as much one-on-top-of-the-other pattern as often happens in transition, because they were 2-4 minutes apart."

Just before 5am, I started to feel like pushing. I still didn't know how far I was dilated... I just knew my body was pushing... according to my doula, from the sounds I was making and what I was doing during contractions, that I was pushing. But when the nurse checked me she would say, "Do you want to know?" and I kept saying "no." The nurse would say, "Well, you can't push quite yet."

Several hours later we learned that there was a lip of cervix that was still in the way. The doctor came in and pushed the lip up over the baby's head while I pushed(which was excruciating) in hopes that we could push the baby's head around it and get it out of the way... but when the nurse came back, the lip had returned.

This repeated 3 or 4 times, I don't quite remember... it was awful... I had to lay on my back while they did it which is the most uncomfortable position to labor in... I don't know how women do it...

The nurse told us that the baby was bigger than they thought and that her head was slightly tilted. The doctor told us that I could push for another hour or so but if the baby's head didn't straighten out and start to move down that we could be looking at a CS.

An hour later the baby hadn't descended anymore, so I agreed to do the CS... I had been pushing for over 5 hours at that point (only a little over 2 hours by the nurses notes) but I felt horrible, like I was giving up and that I didn't try hard enough... I cried a little at this point and asked my husband if he would go with me... He agreed which surprised me again because I knew how squeamish he was.

Although we had agreed on a name, it wasn't my top choice and I used the opportunity to try to persuade him into letting me have the name I really wanted... he said no and my mom about threw a fit... his mom stepped in and asked me if I really thought I would be able to change his mind... I said with a half smile "No, but I had to give it a shot."

They wheeled me back to the OR and I had a few more contractions before the spinal took effect... that really sucked because I knew all that pain was for nothing at that point...

As they were prepping me, I saw the neonatologist come in... the baby had never been in any distress so it concerned me a bit that they had called her in...

The Dr talked me though everything she was doing and said that the baby was really wedged down far (NO SHIT!!! I had just pushed for 5 hours!!!) and that she really had to pry her out...

And then there was a small blue foot dangling above my head... they whisked her away to the other side of the room to clean her up and my husband followed... I remember it seemed like forever before she cried... I asked about her APGAR scores (google it if you want to know more) and the nurse said it hadn't been long enough yet... I saw the neo leave the room so I knew that was a good sign... then the nurse came over and told me her scores were 8 and 9 at 1 and 5 minutes (really good).

She also told me the baby was a lot smaller than they thought but that her head was completely sideways and she would never have come on on her own... if I had kept trying, I could have really hurt her... Although both my husband and the nurse told me her cone head came straight out over her ear, I never noticed it... even in the pictures of the nurse pointing it out I didn't see what they were talking about.

After they cleaned her up, my husband brought her to me... my first glimpse of her face she had her tongue out... funny little thing... I looked back up at him and I saw him rub his eye... I thought he was just really tired but I found out later he was wiping away a tear...

I remember feeling so tired and wishing they would hurry and put me back together so we could go back to the room... I wanted to nurse her right away, something I couldn't do in the OR.

My husband had disappeared and I was a bit worried about him... it turns out Mr. Afraid-of-needles-and-blood was watching the Dr put me back together... he told me later my insides looked like raw steaks :-)

We finally got back to the room and I immediately put her skin-to-skin and nursed her... I remember looking up at my husband and actually seeing a tear fall... I asked him if he was okay. He said he was just glad it was over... that there were just too many things that could go wrong...

Then he watched her nurse... He was so surprised that she already knew what to do :-)

So after 41 hours of labor (only 15 hours of it was hard labor) with 5 of the hours pushing, my little girl joined us at 10:59 am on September 17th, 2009... And with the exception of the spinal right before my CS, it was completely natural... no pain meds... and if I had the chance to do it again, knowing what the outcome would be, I would still choose to labor naturally...