I'm writing this weeks later but I'm finally in a place where I can. On January 26th I went to my weekly OB appointment. My blood pressure was a little on the high side so we had a follow up the next day. Still higher than they wanted, but my cervix wasn't even a full centimeter dilated and 80% effaced. The doctor told me to go to the hospital anyway and start with induction because of my sudden rise in blood pressure. When I got there around 3 with my parents and fiance, the nurse made my parents go home since they expected to start pitocin in the morning. They began monitoring me and said they would probably give me a pill to get contractions going, but my body decided to throw that plan out the window. I was already having contractions every 5 minutes or so but not intense. It just felt like bad back pain so I had been ignoring it. Apparently that meant they couldn't give me the pills, so they gave me an option. A tampon to encourage dilation or a catheter that would definitely result in dilation. I went with the more effective sounding catheter. The midwife came in and got that going at 7 pm, followed eventually by a shot of morphene. Did not know how much that morphene would BURN. Anyway once that kicked in I was out. I woke up to the midwife coming in at 7 AM. She made a grand promise of "let's check your cervix, get you breakfast and a shower, and get the pitocin going." Well that was tossed when I was found to be 5 cm dilated. No shower. No breakfast. She called a nurse in and they broke my water. Soon I was on pitocin and my mom arrived just in time to hold my hand while they got me the epidural. I'm pretty sure that hurt way more than it should have. Probably because I hadn't been having contractions powerful enough to warrant it yet. Anyway they came in around 10 and checked my cervix. Still 5 cm. Around lunch time, same thing. At this point something weird started happening. They had been flipping me from side to side but suddenly they were doing it more often with concerned faces. One nurse started shaking my belly and another started oxygen on me. My blood pressure was dropping and LO's heart rate with it. They gave me some turbutaline to bring things back up and slow down contractions. They were coming too quickly for LO to handle. I knew things were going wrong but I didn't know how scary it was until much later. I think my blood pressure was too low for me to compute everything. It went down to 90/40 and his heartbeat was lost at least 3 times. By 3:30 I still hadn't dilated any more and the doctor who had come in got me in the stirrups. I thought she was just checking something out but she told me to push and when I had about twice, she took her hand out and said I was now 10 cm dilated. I didn't know they could do that but I guess they had to make fast choices. At that point it was my parents and fiancé and the three nurses and doctor in the room. I started pushing on command, but I couldn't feel enough to push well. His head crowned and returned 3 times. They used a vacuum to help me and gave me a severe episiotomy and eventually he was born sunny side up. My baby boy was blue when they carried him to the cleaning station. They worked hard to get him breathing right before giving him to me for skin to skin. I was only allowed to hold him for a minute before they put him in a cart and transferred him to the "transitional nursery" for observation. I didn't see him for another 6 hours. When he came back to me, he was weak and could barely cry. There was a red mound on his head where the suction had caused a hematoma. Two weeks later there's a circle of scar tissue healing still. Mom said (I was way too exhausted and distracted to notice) that there had been 12 nurses and an infant crash cart in the room by the time he was born. It was the most stressful and terrifying day of my life, but we are both safe and healthy now. My only question is why they didn't opt for a C-section. 😓