My birth story: 37 hour labor

Saturday morning we got up at 7:30 and ate breakfast. I got in the shower and called the midwife at 9:00. She suggested we continue to labor at home until the contractions were five minutes apart or by 2:30 PM (12 hours after my water had broken). She also said she wouldn't mind if I called again at noon to just check in with her.

That morning we finished packing our bags, ran an errand, and at some lunch. I called to check in with the midwife at 12:30 after a walk and told her they contractions were becoming more painful but not any closer together...in fact some of them were spaced further apart. She said to go ahead and come in to the hospital.

We checked in and were in the room and changed by 1:30 PM. They put me on the monitor and did an internal exam. We were 90% effaced but still only 1 cm. At 5:00 PM the nurse suggested laboring in the shower for 30 minutes to help me relax. At 5:45 PM they started me on Pitocin and we continued to labor until 8:45 PM when they checked my cervix again. We were at 3 cm dilated and started to discuss whether I would want any pain medication during the labor. We decided to hold off on the epidural for awhile and instead they started me on Nubain. It helped with the pain and made me quite loopy. I'm not sure I was making much sense at this point. The midwife also did some research into my history and let us know that a cone biopsy I had in 2007 after an abnormal Papsmear was likely the reason why we weren't dilating on our own. Apparently there can be scar tissue after a procedure like that. I thought it was interesting to finally understand why I was contracting for weeks with no cervix progress.

At 7 AM Sunday morning, they checked my cervix and I was fully dilated and Mallory was at a +1 station. We continued to labor until 8:30 when I started to notice that the epidural was wearing off. They gave me a bolis (spelling?) to help relieve some of the pain. At 9:30 AM, they restarted the Pitocin to help strengthen the contractions and push Mallory down. At 10:40 I suddenly had the urge to push and with no nurses in the room at the time had to resist. We got the nurse in the room quickly and my family went to the waiting room. We began pushing and things were progressing well. Just as things were getting really intense and we could see Mallory's head, I let them know I was feeling a side stitch. The epidural was wearing off again. They gave me another bolis but it was too late. I pushed for roughly 2.5 hours and felt most of it through the faded epidural.

Mallory Elisabeth was born at 1:17 PM. Shortly after she was born, that second bolis kicked in and my legs went numb. Grr. It ended up being a good thing though that I was numb at that point because I had a 3rd degree tear, another external tear and an episiotomy. It took about 50 minutes to sew me up. At 9 lbs, 2 oz and 22.25 inches long, Mallory was a chunkster!