Because of my gestational diabetes and (undiagnosed) preeclampsyia, they decided to start induction when I was at 38 weeks. Again, your induction could be very different from mine, but this is how mine went. Part of why I even started this blog is because I could find the medical stories of induction, but I could never find any personal stories from the mom's point of view. I went in on a Monday night, and things didn't really get going until the next morning. The night before, I was really just there for "cervix ripening". Basically, I was given 1/4 of a pill, every few hours (can't remember the name of the drug). I had to be in the hospital and hooked up to a fetal monitor just in case my baby went into any distress as a result. If you've ever had those belly bands hooked up to you (and some of you are lucky enough to now have had to deal with them up until this point), you'll know that baby jumps on and off the monitor all the time- or at least my little pain in the butt did (she used to swat and kick at it, even). So, imagine keeping a baby on a monitor, while she's in your stomach, while trying to sleep, while nurses are checking on you every 2 hours (even more when the baby jumps off the monitor). Needless to day, this was the beginning of my entire week without sleep!
The next morning my amazing midwife came to really get things going. To help with dilation, she inserted a small balloon into my cervix and then inflated it. She put a small, light weight on the end and it slowly pulled the balloon out and when she was done, I was dilated to 3 cm. It was a bit uncomfortable, about the equivalent of the uncomfortableness of them checking your cervix, but overall no big deal. Then my midwife broke my water with a hook similar to this :
Again, sounds wayyyyy worse than it is! A little uncomfortable and then a gush of grossness between your legs and you're done. Then, they started pitocin which brings on major contractions. I knew I wanted an epidural from the beginning. So, she was done around 10 am, and I asked for my epidural then. Now, unfortunately for me, I was at one of the most mismanaged hospitals I could ever imagine. It took until around 2 pm for the first epidural attempt. A "trainee" came (supervised) to do my epidural. He tried twice and I thought we were good. Well, about 2 minutes after he left I discovered that we were not good. I then had to wait 2 more hours until I got an epidural that actually took.
So, from about 4pm-10pm, all was good for me. After 10, either the intensity of the contractions got kicked up A LOT, or the epidural was wearing off (or needed to be altered), or both. BUT, my awesome labor and delivery nurse was off on an emergency c-section and I was left with... no one (well, my poor husband, but no medical personnel that could up my pain meds). It was an awful feeling. No nurse would help me of take responsibility of me as a patient.
Around 11:15, I felt a ton of pressure and thought it was time to push! A nurse checked me, and it was time. She called my midwife and my midwife asked the nurse to start pushing with me while she was on her way. The nurse refused to push with me because she had too many other patients to take care of. Then, her and another nurse sat in my room for 20 minutes talking about what food they wanted from Checkers! It was pretty infuriating. Fortunately, my midwife arrived around 11:40 pm and my good nurse came back from her c-section shortly after. By this point, I could feel everything! So not only did I have an epidural and not get to say that I was an awesome mom who delivered naturally, I still felt everything! My beautiful baby girl, Madison Jennifer was born at 12:04 am on August 13th (a Wednesday- 2 days after my initial hospital arrival, technically). Now, people talk about a stitch here and there afterwards (perineal). BUT, they don't talk about 16 stitches after and that you can feel absolutely all of those stitches. So, after an agonizing (for me- worse than child birth) 10 minutes, the whole thing was over.
When I was living it, it seemed to take forever. Looking back, it's like I blinked, and it was over, and I was left with the most beautiful little girl that I could have ever asked for. Sure, I wish I researched my hospital a bit better. Yes, I was miserable for 30 hours. But, it was absolutely, totally worth it. Even if I knew I had to go through that again, of course I would. Because, in the end, I got the best gift of all- my daughter.
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