My induction story

I don't normally post much, but I wanted to share my induction story in case it would be helpful to others. I tried to read as many stories as I could before we had our little girl.

Backgroud: This is my third child. First labor was about 18 hours long and my second was about 10 hours long. With both previous labors, my water broke naturally but I did not have contractions or dialation so I ended up using pitocin and an epidural.

I was induced at 39 weeks using prostin gel. I was supposed to get two doses 4 hours apart, and the Dr thought the whole process would take between 12-18 hours as I was not dialated at all when we started the induction.

The first dose of gel was placed at 1:30am. Within 30 minutes, I started having pretty noticable contractions. Within an hour, the contractions were strong and unconfortable. I spoke with the nurse, who said that is normal. I tried to sleep, but was in too much pain to do so. After more complaining on my part, I was checked again just before 5am, and the nurses were surprised that I was already 5cm. By this point, I was in a lot of pain, and asked for the epidural. I was told that they would call the person to do it, but that she was on-call and it would take 30 minutes for her to arrive. I was not happy, but thought at least there's an end in sight!

Just as my husband was checking on where the epidural was, my water broke. This was at about 5:30. They checked me again and I was fully dialatated. The pain was so intense at this point, and I was obviously told there was no time for the epidural (not that it was an option since the person to do it had not yet arrived). The on-call DR had also not arrived, so we were waiting for the mid-wife who was in the hospital to get to my room. I told the nurses I had to push, but I'm not sure they believed me. I started pushing on my own and minutes later the mid-wife arrived. At 5:44am, my daughter was born.

The whole induction process, from start to finish, was just about 4 hours. I never needed the second dose of gel, and from what I can tell I went from 5-10cm pretty instanstaly when my water broke.

For me, it was a scary situation. While the labor was fast and I was able to do it med-free, I was very concerned that the DR did not have time to get to the hospital. With my previous two births, I've needed the vaccume to get them delivered. Our mid-wife does not know how to use the vaccume so I was so worried that something was going to go wrong before the DR arrived. This was actually the reason why we scheduled the induction - to ensure that a DR was on hand for the delivery since my practice uses both midwives and DRs. Unfortunatly, my DR underestimated the time I would be in labor and as a result I started the induction sooner than I needed to. Luckliy for us, it was actually a really smooth delivery and it was the first time I did not need the vaccume.

One thing I've learned from this is to find out exactly how you on-call system works. Who is at the hospital when, how long it takes them to drive there, and when they are called in the laboring process? I still look back and can't believe a DR was not able to get there in time, but I'm very thankful everyone worked out and our daughter is here and safe.