Camryn's Birth Story @Carriebear22

Carriebear22 · July 2014

Camryn Marie was born 6/20/2014 at 7:51 am. She weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and was 21 inches long. She has quite a bit of dark hair (much to my surprise) She is absolutely perfect! (Although I admit I am a little biased)

We were induced on 6/19 at 40 weeks exactly, due to concerns about my blood pressure at a few points during the pregnancy. I started at 1 cm dilated, 80% effaced and -1 station. Very favorable conditions for induction. Pitocin was started around 7:30 am, and contractions started within minutes. I felt pretty comfortable through it, and we napped part of the morning while watching TV. Dr planned on breaking my water around 12pm-1pm so we relaxed for the morning.

Around noon things were getting mildly uncomfortable, so I decided to labor in the tub before things go too intense and I wanted an epidural. We spent about 1 hour in there as my "calm before the storm". Dr Arrived a little before 1 but let me stay in the tub until I was ready for her to break water, which we ended up doing around 1:30. At that tie my cervix was posterior to the baby so it felt like they were digging for my tonsls through my lady bits, honestly that was the most painful part of the whole experience. We discovered at that time I was only dilated to 2. They reminded me that getting to 4 is the longest part but after breaking water the contractions can get much more intense and frequent so ask for Epi when I was ready. After 2 contractions i would rate 6/10 for pain I realized that this is going to take a while yet and I didnt want to deal with contractions like this for 8 hours and not have any energy left to push, so we got the epidural at about 2:30. (yes I felt like a whimp for asking for it at 2 cm, but they reassured me that it was a good decision) It took a little work to get the epidural in but it was worth it. Only problem I very sensitive to narcotics and there is some in the epi, so I was high and got very anxious regarding the loss of control over the situation. and my legs. (I can be a bit of a control freak and can usually handle stress very well, but apparently not when I'm high) I took a nap and the narc wore off, woke feeling like myself without legs.

I'll do a timeline summary here because the next 12 hours were pretty boring:
8 pm: Dr checked, dilated to 3 om. What!?!?! 12 hours of Pit and only at 3! I was reminded it takes longest to get to 4. I guess at this point Dr noticed that Camryn's head was tilted down and to the left and knew that if she didnt straighten up we would not progress. Spent next several hours turning side to side and lying with peanut ball betwen legs.
12 am: Guess Camryn didnt want her birthday to be June 19th. checked and we are at 4 cm. Really, only one cm in the last 4 hours when we are at max pit?!?! i start to realize this isnt normal and thinking we might end up a csection. But we are finally at 4 so things should speed up now right???
1am: she started not tolerating me lying on one side but she does fine on the other side. got a little oxygen and stayed on the good side.
3:30 am. Checked and at 5 cm. Really, only one more cm? I look at the nurse and say "I'm going to be a failure to progress csection aren't I?" and she replies "We don't say those things out loud yet". So they already knew.
6:00 am, shift change, new nurse checks me and I'm at 5 1/2 cm. Really, so after 22 hours of pitocin we have only gone from 1 cm to 5 1/2??? List ditch effort to get baby to turn but laboring lying over the peanut ball, rocking back and forth.
7:00 am: Off the ball, checked and now can be stretched to a 6. Nurse tells me "I'm going to turn off your pitocin and let you rest for a bit, Dr should be in soon with a decision" She comes back with a consent form for a csection. Dr comes in and confirms what I've known for about 7 hours, that this baby isn't coming on her own. I felt like such a failure but at the same time felt so relieved that I wasn't going to need to push and have my vagina get all ripped up (I felt very guilty about thinking that)
7:51 am: Miss Camryn is brought into the world! DH got to trim her cord and put on her first diaper. (he had never put on a diaper before so this was a big deal). After a few minutes of feeling like I couldn't breathe and dry heaving, I got to hold my baby girl on the way back to our room and have our skin on skin time. That made everything right with the world. I didn't care how she had gotten here, she was here now, safe and healthy. Heaven on earth!

Thanks for hanging in there, I know I'm a little long winded! And now pictures of my little princess!