Birth Story: Planned Intervention free birth turned c-section (long)

 Sorry this is so long - this is the full version for my journal and I don't have the time or energy  for the cliff notes version.

For the past 3 weeks leading up to the night of December 29^th, I had made no significant progress and had never really felt a contraction (real or Braxton Hicks).  At my monitoring appointment on Monday, I had actually had two contractions, but hadn?t felt them at all.

On December 29^th, I started felling sporadic contractions in the afternoon, but nothing that I needed to pay attention to.  Stephen arrived home from work around 6pm and I started to make dinner ? chicken enchiladas.  Around 7pm, dinner was out of the oven and I casually mentioned to Stephen that I was having contractions ? just wanted to give him the heads up.  He asked if we should time them, but I didn?t think it was necessary. 

Around 7pm, I ate some dinner, standing in the kitchen so I could move through the contractions while Stephen worked on taking the Christmas tree down.  I decided that it was time to start timing the contractions and got my handy iPhone out.  In the first ten minutes of timing, I had 3 contractions, lasting over a minute.  This is when we started getting into gear.

We tidied the house, cleaned up dinner, pout away Christmas, all while I was having contractions that were consistently 3 minutes apart and lasting for over a minute, but I was in denial that I could go into labor so quickly.

I wanted to go take a walk, since our Bradley instructor emphasized that we should do some sort of activity to see if it would slow/stall the contractions.  In our neighborhood, there are 2 ?loops? that we can take for walking.  I told Stephen that I wanted to do the 1-mile loop.  He said that we should do the shorter loop and we could do it twice, but it would keep us closer to the house.  I still wanted to do the longer loop so we started down the path, but I had a particularly strong contraction and decide that the shorter loop was a better option.  Within about 3 minutes, I wanted to go home.

We headed home and both wanted to hop in the shower.  Stephen went first while I finished packing the bags and checking things off of the list.  A few minutes later, I was convinced that we needed to get going.  Stephen was still in the shower, so I started changing into clean clothes.  When Stephen got out of the shower, he saw me changing into clean clothes and asked why I wasn?t going to shower ? I told him that it was time to go to the hospital.

I said good-bye to Ruby and we packed the car and hit the road.  We arrived at the hospital at 9pm.  From 7pm ? 9pm, the time span where we were timing the contractions, they were always at least 1 minute long and less than 3 minutes apart.

When they checked me when I first arrive, I was 5cm and 90% effaced.  Needless to say, I was excited.  They monitored me for 30 minutes before letting me get out of bed so that I could move through and manage the contractions, as I wanted.  It didn?t take long for the contractions to intensify.  Once I was up and able to move, the contractions were 15 ? 30 seconds apart last for at least 90 seconds.  There was absolutely no way to recover from the contraction before then next one started.  I was having back labor which made each contraction that much more intense.  Around 11pm, I was checked again and I was 9-? cm and complete, but baby was nowhere to be found ? she was not coming down.  I continued with the crazy non-stop contractions for another half an hour ? was checked again, no progress on the baby moving.  At this point, I was exhausted and the pain was so intense that my whole body was shaking (as I was standing). 

Around 11:30pm, I finally gave in and requested the epidural and the most wonderful man came and brought sweet relief.  The nurse and anesthesiologist were amazed that I had made it so long without the epi and were impressed that I managed to stay still during while they administered the epi, since I had 4 contractions during the procedure.

Once the epi was in, I was able to relax and get some rest.  We were all convinced that a little bit of time, we would be ready to push.  Stephen and I watched the Borne Supremacy.  Over the next few hours, I was checked and the baby still was not moving down.  Around 3 am, they broke my water in hopes that it would move baby along.  At 6 am, there was still not progress.

At 6am, the doctor called and discussed the options of starting pitocin to increase the contractions to move the baby or to go have a c-section.  We decided to try pitocin for an hour ? but it didn?t do anything, so at 7am the doctor arrive and we got ready for the c-section.

Everything moved very quickly.  My epi was turned off and we headed down to the OR.  Stephen put on the very fashionable bunny suit and was sent to our recovery area to wait to be brought into the OR.

The moment that Stephen was gone, I had a pretty big nervous/panic attack.  It was all going very fast.  A new anesthesiologist met me in the OR and started the spinal.  He then explained everything that was going on and was instrumental in calming me down.  The doctor actually started cutting before Stephen got brought back, so he got an eyeful when he came in.  They started cutting at 7:53 am and at 7:56 am on December 30th; Charlotte Marie was born at 6 lbs 12 oz, 21 inches with a very full head of hair.

We were in the hospital for 3 nights after her birth and it was a really great experience.  The nurses were great, we had a private room so Stephen could stay the night and I was amazingly not nervous when we were discharged.  Charlotte lost more than 10% of her birth weight, so we had to supplement with formula for 2 days, but she is a breastfeeding champ now.