Induction/ birth story (very long!)

I will start off by saying that nothing went as I was hoping it went. But I know that is the nature of having babies!

I went in on Nov. 14th to start the induction (which consisted of a cervical check and 1 dose of cervidil) my cervix was not ready as I was only at week 38, being induced. They reminded me that this would be a marathon and that it was important to stay the course towards a vaginal delivery. Which is what I wanted!

Since I was in for induction for medical reasons, I had to be hooked up to monitors 24/7. Good news was I was apparently contracting regularly on my own! The bad news was that my baby has always been super active and as a result the nurses had to be in and out of my room all night readjusting the monitors so they could keep tracking the babys HR which meant I got maybe 4hrs of sleep.

By late on the 15th, I was beginning to think I was the only one interested in the staying the marathon course. Normally I love my provider and all the midwives at the practice (our maternity Ward is strictly midwives with 1 or 2 DRs on call), but suddenly I felt like they were all rushing forward with the induction. The cervidil left me only 3cm dilated and 50% effaced and my cervix was still very high (aka super painful cervical checks!). They offered cervedil again or using the Foley balloon, but were pushing the balloon because it was "faster". Faster didn't feel right, I wanted my cervix better prepped so I selected the cervidil. It only got us to almost 3cm & 70% that was the morning of the 16th.

I took cytotec that night with the goal of getting to 5cm so they could manually break my water. However they couldn't finish the full round of cytotec because my contractions were TOO close together. They had to stop after 2 doses and give me IV fuids to space out the contractions. In the morning I was ALMOST at 5, so they took me off the monitors and encouraged me to walk around, bounce on the yoga ball to see if I could get the rest of the way. On the 17th, all the nurses were today was gonna be the day! They were mostly right at least in the fact that things were definitely going to amp up!

They broke my water added pitocin drip and contractions started coming hard and fast. But again, too fast so they would slow down with fluids, but in the end it was too much fluids that became an issue. They ended up spacing my contractions TOO far apart.

I got my epidural in the afternoon happily, but that is where things started to go sideways. The guy had to do it twice because he screwed up the first stick. Fun! 😳

I was pushing by about 9p with my mom and husband as my support people. But my contractions were still too far apart and after 2hrs of pushing I began to get immense pain in my lower back so strong that I could barely take a deep breath to start a push. I switched positions a number of times, tore off my clothes, started threatening my husband and mother with unspeakable deaths and mentally was always about 1min from ripping out every IV and cord that was attached to me! lol my legs were fully numb from the epidural which also didn't help things, but nothing I tried was getting rid of this ridiculous pain in my back. Yes, I started to panic and give up. It just didn't feel right. Every person in the room insisted I was strong and would be fine, that this would just take a few more hours. I BEGGED for a C Section, that this pain was so debilitating that it didn't feel right and I wouldn't be able to last a few more hours. The Dr. on call did another cervical check and said we could do a c section but listed all the potential issues. My mom tried to guilt me and I told her this was my decision, something wasn't right.

It got busy in the room, my mom got scared, but husband was fine with my decision and trusted my instincts. He gowned up and followed us to the OR. I got new pain meds that numbed me from chest down and instantly took care of the pain in my back. I got loaded onto the surgical table, hubby was sat next to my head and the anesthesiologist gave me updates and let me know when more pain meds were available. During the process I began to shake uncontrollably, common labor by product they said, but my husband was scared.

Our babys head was wedged into my hips, I will never forget the sounds the Dr. grunting as she tried to pull our baby out. He finally came and I could see him placed on the warming station, I looked at my husband with trepidation, but finally he cried and I cried tears of joy. But it didn't end there.

My uterus hemorrhaged and I began to lose a lot of blood. There was lots moving about the room and I heard people calling out about how much blood I had lost. I briefly wondered if this was going to be my end and I was just waiting to black out. But I made it, I was informed tho that we had to go to for another scan to make sure all the bleeding had been taken care of.

My baby boy was born at 12:07am on 11/18 and I finally returned to my rooma at 3:48a. I held my baby and told him I loved him and then promptly passed out.

It has been a long, slow recovery process. Rounds of antibiotics because I developed an infection shortly after induction, constant nausea, lack of appetite and a severe delay in my breast milk coming in because of the massive blood loss. Baby is mostly fine but has to be under the jaundice lights to fix his billirubin levels. Looking at discharge in about 2 days. Just want to be home and getting into a new routine.

Hope this doesn't scare anyone. I believe my decision was the right one. That we would have had complications either way and that the c section was the easier choice. And it IS your choice always!