Madeline Therese has arrived!! ♥️♥️♥️

I was induced yesterday at 7pm, and started with Cervidil. Was barely 1cm dilated. After 12 hours multiple painful cervical checks and an almost entirely sleepless night (apparently every time I started to doze, either I moved the baby’s heart rate monitor or baby decided to move to the other side 😩), I made it to 1.5ish cm 😭.

At 7:30am, Dr gave the okay to start Pitocin, and so began some pretty painful contractions. At 1pm, I started to really feel the pain, so I caved and got the epidural.

At 2pm, they gave me the epidural, and HOLY CRAP IT HURT. Idk if it was the guy or what, but he seemed to rush and I felt every part of it coming in. It lasted for maybe an hour, and at 3pm, I started complaining about painful contractions again. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, so they shifted my position, increased my dosage, and tried heating packs, all the while I was miserable and feeling full-blown contraction pain every 2 mins but only on my right side (friggin SUCKED). At this point, I’m exhausted, and when the dr did another cervical check, I didn’t even have the energy to flinch. Only 3cm.

At 5pm they pulled out the epidural and decided to reapply. It was a different tech, who used a different technique and a different med, but still, NOTHING. It just wouldn’t work on my right side. The anesthesiologist double and triple checked his work, but couldn’t figure it out. He said that I may just have an extra valve on that vertebrae, and said he was gonna talk to my dr and come up with a game plan.

At this point, it’s just about 6pm. I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten anything, I was apparently dehydrated even though I was hooked up to an IV (wouldn’t find that out til later), and I was just hanging. My husband said I was pale and could barely keep my eyes open, let alone push.

The dr came in, thinking that maybe the reason I was having so much pain is maybe her head was pressing on something - NOPE. Still only 4cm, 50% effaced and at -2 station.

24 hours of labor (even though it wasn’t all active) and I only had 4 cm to show for it.

Dr sat down and basically said, at this point the only 2 options we have are to either have a c-section or power through and hope we don’t end up having a c-section anyway.

I chose the c-section.

My poor anesthesiologist redeemed himself, and I was able to get a 3rd epidural, a spinal this time but at a different vertebrae (he said its just more evidence that I have an extra valve at the other vertebrae). Within 10 minutes, my baby girl was screaming at the top of her lungs, and I was bawling like a baby.

Surgery went well for all of us, we’re all perfectly healthy, and Madeline was born at 7lbs3oz and 22 inches!

TLDR: Next time, I’m going to refuse to go early unless absolutely friggin necessary!