Birth story!

Ashley

I started having contractions on Monday, but they weren’t painful, just uncomfortable. I didn’t even know they were contractions until my ultrasound appointment that morning when they hooked me up to the monitor and told me they were happening.

By Tuesday afternoon, I was still contracting so I called my midwife who told me to go in to Maternal Observation. I KNEW they were going to send me home because the contractions weren’t painful enough to be active labor and weren’t quite close enough together. They said I was dilated to a 2. I was then instructed to walk for an hour, after which I had not dilated any more, so I was sent home.

I had an appointment with my midwife on Wednesday and was only dilated to a 2 and a half. I was still contracting. They decided to induce me that coming Monday night, because I would be 39 weeks on Sunday, and because they believed he was so small he was one percentile away from being Growth Restricted, so I wasn’t supposed to go past 40 weeks, whatsoever.

The contractions did not go away 🙃

Come Sunday night, the contractions started to HURT. I was actually groaning in pain, which woke up my mom around 5 am. They had been painful since about midnight and had gone from 7 minutes apart to 4 minutes apart. We went into the hospital. And I was still not even a good 3. However, my midwife didn’t want to send me home, because we were afraid we wouldn’t know when to come back, because I was already meeting all the criteria for actually coming to the hospital, besides being dilated to a 4. So, they decided to go ahead and induce.

I’m not certain on all the times, just because I was a bit out of it due to pain meds and definitely distracted. They waited until after lunch to start me on Pitocin. Then a while later, inserted a balloon to manually dilate me. The balloon was in for a while before a nurse had me go to the restroom and try to remove it, and it came right out!

I powered through the contractions as much as I could, and by the time I caved and asked for an epidural, the contractions were so painful I was crying.

Now, I am in no way exaggerating when I say I had the WORST nurse ever. She made multiple inappropriate comments, her demeanor was just generally unpleasant, and she nearly took my IV out every time she scanned my bracelet. So, it was no surprise when I told her I was feeling pressure and she told me she wasn’t going to check my cervix yet because their was “no way” I was dilated enough already.

Not even 5 minutes later, my mom called for a nurse because the pressure had become so intense I was groaning again.

She came in with the worst attitude, lifted my covers, and quickly called the midwife back in because I was crowning 🙃

The midwife came in, immediately began getting dressed, and told me to began pushing on my next contraction, as she was still getting ready. By the time she had gotten in the room, his head was already halfway out. I only ended up pushing maybe 3 times, for a total of 7 minutes. I remember Terrible Nurse telling me to shut up because I was making too much noise, and her receiving an earful in return. But once I had my little boy on my chest, I couldn’t have cared less about her.

I had him at 2:54 am Monday morning, and he was 6 pounds and 14 ounces, despite the fact that they believed he was going to be tiny. We immediately did skin to skin, and breastfed with NO issues. I did manage to get a second degree tear, due to the fact that I waited so long to begin pushing, since Terrible Nurse didn’t check when she was should have.

But, I’m super late in writing this because my sweet boy is now 3 weeks old 😂❤️