Okay so I went in on Friday November 10th at 6:30 to start my induction at 39w 2days. And of course it was shift change so I didn’t get back to a room until after 7. First they just hooked me up to the monitors so they could get a good tracing of baby girls baseline heart rate while we waited for the iv specialist to come in because I’m a hard stick. My midwife checked me around 8:45 and I was still the same 1cm that I had been for the last 3 weeks and baby girl was still “way up in Canada” as she put it. She was conflicted between using cytotec or pitocin to start but we ended up going with pitocin since I responded well to it with my last baby. At 9:15 I finally got my iv and they started the pitocin. I stayed out of bed the whole time either swaying or bouncing in my birth ball. Fast forward to noon and I was having contractions on the morning 2-3 minutes apart but they weren’t any more painful than period cramps and I could still talk through them. Around 12:45 they noticed her heart rate was starting to climb into the 180-190 range, so they checked my temperature and I was running a low grade fever so they had me get in bed to try to calm her down and gave me an fluid bolus which thankfully worked and by 2p my temperature was 98.4 and her heart rate was back in the 130-150 range. At 3pm I had reached the max dose on pitocin and was still only 1cm and high. So the cut the pitocin dose back to half and tried to “reset” my body and see if they’re was any change. So I got out into the hallways and just started making laps trying to get things going but come 630p I reached the max dose again and was still only 1cm. So my midwife gave me a few options. 1. Stop everything go home, rest and come back another day. 2. Stop pitocin, eat dinner and try cervedil through the night. 3. Same as number 2 but with cytotec. I talked it over with my family and decided to go with number 3. Now we chose this for a few reasons my sister who was my childcare while I’m in the hospital, her mother in law had went into cardiac arrest around noon that morning and was on life support. So we didn’t wanna risk going home and not having child care or having to plan a delivery around a funeral and my sister insisted that she wanted to stay with them. Another reason being that we were already there and I already had everything going and my so had already started his paternity leave from work and couldn’t reschedule it so we didn’t wanna waste his time off sitting at home. So he got me some chick fil a from our hospital cafeteria and we sent our family gone to eat and sleep. about 8p they inserted the 1st dose of cytotec. Felt a little cramping the first hour but it went away. 1130 I got the second dose. After laying for the 30 minutes it takes to dissolve I tried to get up and do some dancing so I was going to town with the cha cha slide, the wobble, and the Cupid shuffle but they shut down my party because my heart rate was getting to high and already having cardiac conditions they didn’t want me pushing it. at 2:40a. They inserted that dose and I went right back to sleep. Around 3:20a I couldn’t sleep through the pain anymore. So I got up and took a sponge bath and got back to bouncing and swaying on my ball. At 6am I got my 4th and final cytotec dose and the contractions were definitely intense but not super regular so I called my mom to come back up. My midwife came in at 9 and I was at 3cm and baby girl has dropped (thank you Jesus for progress! Because if I didn’t they were sending me home) she immediately asked for a hook broke my water. Now this is went shit got real. They restarted my pitocin at 940a and it was supposed to be at a rate of 2 and then be increased over time. (Stay tuned) at this point the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart sometime even one big one and a small one right on top of it I just kept bouncing on my ball trying to tough it out but I also kept having to go to the bathroom every 15 mins. At one point I could even walk out of the bathroom anymore and I just stood at the door and that’s when we could tell something wasn’t right and my mom got the nurse to come check me and I was still at 3 cm. this is about 1030 and she was getting ready to up my pitocin when she realized that the iv pump had some how malfunctioned and I was getting it at a dose of 16 (the max dose being 20) so she talked with my midwife and decided to stop the pitocin and try to give me a break to catch up but the contractions were still coming right in top of each other with no breaks . My boyfriend and his mom ran downstairs and got lunch and I had a heart to heart with my mom over my pain. I had been refusing epidural because it made my back and hips hurt so much with my last two. But at this point my back and hip we already hurting so bad. I finally broke and couldn’t take it anymore and walked into the hall and asked my midwife for an epidural. She asked to check me first, so at 1125 I was 4cm. And by 11:40 I had the epidural in, all before my boyfriend got back from lunch. He came back to find me crying laying in the bed and was so confused. That epidural was probably the worst one I had ever gotten. I was screaming and crying like a baby. She hit a nerve that sent a pain down my right hip and leg so bad I jumped. And it took forever for it to kick in. At 12:23p I got my catheter out in because I kept telling the nurse that I felt like my bladder was gonna explode with each contraction. She checked me then and I was 6cm. She came back in at 1245 to make sure the epidural started working and I told her I just felt a lot of pressure on my rectum so she was like well let me check you then. And boom I was complete 10cm. She didn’t even leave me because she could already feel her head my midwife came in and the nurse had me start pushing and I didn’t even get to the count of 2 when the all told me to stop so my midwife could get her gown on. And with the next contraction she was out at 12:55! She was having a hard time crying to the took her to the warmer and got her suctioning real good (apparently when they told me to stop pushing she took in a big gulp of fluid) the cleaned her off and weighed her. 8lbs 10oz (my smallest baby yet! My others were 9 and a half) I finally got her back and she immediately latched on and nursed for and hour. Sorry for the long story but it is like 30 hours worth of events. But I don’t call it 30 hours of labor since the real contractions didn’t start till 3am Saturday morning. So I say it was more like 10 hours of labor.