I realized I never shared my birth story, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it now. This is mostly for helping me process the whole experience since in a lot of ways it was pretty traumatic.

On June 13th, at 41w 1d, I went into the hospital at 8pm to be induced. We got set up in the room and around 10pm the doctor inserted a foley bulb to help get me dilated. I had been 1cm since 37 weeks and the foley bulb was used to dilate me to 3 cm. It’s basically a balloon they insert and slowly inflate. Once you get to 3cm it falls out on it’s own. At the same time they started me on a low pitocin drip. The foley bulb was very uncomfortable. By the time I asked for pain medicine, a little over an hour after it was inserted, it fell out. It happened much quicker than I thought it would and it was such a relief once the bulb fell out.

The nurse set me up to continue the pitocin throughout the night. I tried to get some sleep but I was way too uncomfortable. My husband slept a little on the couch in our room, but not much. Around 5 am the pain was really bad so I asked for an epidural. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long.

The actual process of getting the epidural was completely fine, no pain at all. And for about 20 minutes after getting the epidural, I started to feel great. The pain went down so much, and I started to feel numb in my legs. However, after that 20 minutes, everything went downhill.

The doctor came in and broke my water. They noticed meconium in my water so the nurse told me the NICU staff would be there when my son was born to make sure he was okay. After my water was broken I started feeling this awful pressure in my pelvis and against my tailbone. The doctor let me know my baby was face up and causing the extra pressure. I’m not sure why, but the epidural wasn’t helping with this pain at all. A nurse told me the epidural doesn’t always help with pressure like that.

The pitocin drip continued, and contractions intensified. I could feel every bit of the pain as several hours passed. I can’t remember what time, but at some point the doctor checked me and I was 5cm. I stayed in excruciating pain and they tried increasing the epidural meds several times. The nurse had me try the peanut ball but it was so uncomfortable I had to stop. A few hours later I was 9 cm and I was thinking that all this pain was actually worth it.

I continued to labor for 4 more hours with absolutely no progress. I could feel every contraction. They were happening every 2 minutes and lasting at least 1 minute. My body was fighting against the pain by having my body push/bare down with each contraction. The nurse kept telling me not to bare down but I literally could not control it. My sweet husband was there to help me talk me through each contraction and to let me squeeze his hand. I was so exhausted by this point (about 13 hours of this pain) that I was actually passing out between contractions. I felt bad because we had family waiting to see us all day but I was in so much pain that we didn’t let anybody back in our room the whole time.

Finally, around 6:30pm my doctor came into our room and said she didn’t see me getting to a full 10cm. My baby was big, and even if I had made it to 10cm I’m not sure I could have pushed him out. She offered to do a c-section and I immediately said yes.

They took me to the OR to prep. They re-did the epidural since the first one wasn’t working, but the second one ended up not working either. They kept testing to see if it was working by poking parts of me that were supposed to be numb with a needle. I could feel it all. The head anesthesiologist came over to me and said they’d have to put me to sleep and that I would miss the actual birth. Luckily they didn’t need to use general anesthesia because then my husband wouldn’t have been able to be present.

They put a mask on me and I remember being moved around and finally passing out. I woke up later in a small recovery area with my husband and our perfect son.

Caleb Christopher was born on June 14th at 7:08pm. He weighed 9lbs 5oz and was 21.25 inches long.

My husband said it was so hard to watch me in the surgery because my body was reacting to the pain and I was moaning in my sleep. I didn’t get to see my son come into the world or hear his first cry, but we both came out of surgery okay. I lost more blood than I should have during surgery so a few days later I had a blood transfusion.

It’s been 15 days since Caleb was born, and I’ve been healing pretty well. I hate that I had to basically go through a full unmedicated labor before getting a c section. I ended up back in the hospital a few days ago with terrible pain in my left side. The doctor said I strained a muscle badly and she gave me muscle relaxers which have helped.

And now my husband and I are adjusting to our new life. I’m so in love with my baby boy.