induction birth story (PIP and long)

My little girl, Maya, was born on February 22.  She was 6 lbs and 1 oz and 18 inches long.  The birth didn't go as planned but here's my induction birth story.  

On Sunday, February 20, at 38 weeks and 2 days, I woke up at around 3 am to a little gush of something.  I really had to go so figured it was just lovely pregnancy induced incontinence setting in or just an increase in discharge. It happened again once or twice that morning in bed.  I still didn't think much of it since the volume was so small and it was intermittent and since I wasn't dilated very much on Thursday.  Late Sunday evening the same thing happened again.  And then twice Monday morning.  At this point I became a little concerned.  Because of my high blood pressure and the baby not moving as she should, I was already scheduled for an appointment on Monday afternoon.  

At Monday's appointment, I asked the doctor about the discharge/leakage and he decided to do two tests, pooling and ferning, just to make sure it wasn't amniotic fluid I was leaking.  He didn't seem to think that it was.  We did the usual check.  I had progressed slightly to 1-2 cm.  Then, I went back for the fetal nonstress test.  After a while, the doctor comes back, and said that the pooling test for amniotic fluid was negative but the ferning was positive so he wanted us to go to the hospital for a third test.  

We got to the hospital around 4 pm and got settled in the labor and delivery room.  I was hooked up to the monitors and the tie breaker exam, amnisure, was performed.  It was positive as well.  After the third test, the doctor still wasn't convinced that my membranes had indeed ruptured so he wanted to wait a while and redo the exam.  After 2ish hours, the next amnisure was performed and it also positive.

The doctor came in around 7 pm.  Because of the risk of infection, he felt it was better to induce immediately.  My nurse tried to get the iv started.  She tried both hands with no luck.  She then got another nurse who tried my arm and failed.  They finally decided, after discussing how horrible my veins are, to get the anesthesiologist to do the iv.  He succeeded on his second try with a smaller needle.  He told me not to move my wrist because the location was horrible.  Also, they were unable to draw blood directly from the iv port so had the pleasure of a sixth stick.  Once the iv was in, I was hooked up to pitocin, fluids, and antibiotics.  The pitocin was started at a low dose just to see what would happen, as I had been having mild contractions for weeks.  After the iv was finally in, DH ran home to get our bags and the car seat.  He got back to the hospital at about 9:30.  We made calls to our parents and close friends and then just hung out for a while.

LO decided to be lazy during this time.  She wasn't having a satisfactory number of accelerations in her heart rate.  To try to wake her up they were pushing fluids into me like crazy.  (I was more swollen post delivery than before).  Because of her laziness and my high blood pressure, I was stuck in bed on my side.  However, if I was completely on my side, the contraction monitor wouldn't pick up my contractions.  Since they needed to know how I was responding to the pitocin, I had to stay propped up in a mostly on my side position.  At some point during this period, I felt a pop followed by a gush of fluid.  What I had been feeling on Sunday and Monday morning felt very similar to this, only less volume.  I feel bad for not going in to get checked out sooner.

The contractions were starting to be more painful.  And my hips were killing me from staying in bed in one position too long.  My doctor checked me and I had only progressed to 2 cm  and her head still had not descended.  There was discussion of her head being too large to fit into my pelvis requiring a c section.  At this point, I decided that this was going to be a long night and I should just go ahead with the epidural since I couldn't get out of bed anyway.  The anesthesiologist came in shortly after this and my nurse was giving him a hard time about using the smaller needle for my iv.  I told him I'd give him one try this time.  The epidural really wasn't that bad.  It made me supper itchy and added another tube from the iv pole and a blood oxygen meter, in addition to my two original iv lines, blood pressure cuff, and two monitoring leads.  LO was not impressed with the epidural though.  She started experiencing decelerations in her heart rate.  After the decels started, I was confined to my left side only in the propped up angled position, the pitocin was turned down, and I added an oxygen mask to my accessories.  Because of my position my left side was way numb but my right was just barely numb.  With the stress on the baby, there was again talk of a c section.  The nurse said that if I did not progress quickly, that would be the end result.

Around 4 am Tuesday morning, my doctor checked me.  I was 4 cm and 100% effaced.  I then fell asleep until around 5:30 am.  I was really, really uncomfortable when I woke up and I couldn't stop shaking.  I called the nurse.  The doctor came in and I was shocked to learn I was fully dilated and ready to push.

The pushing and delivery part was surprisingly painful even with the epidural.  I started pushing a little after 6 and LO was born at 7:47 am.  She had an unusually long umbilical cord which was wrapped around her arm, chest, and neck.  This prevented her from being moved to my chest.  There was a definite pause in the room as the doctor and nurses tried to decide what to do.  After some acrobatics on the nurses part, they quickly cut the cord and placed her on my chest.  She didn't pink up as fast as they liked to they soon took her over to the heat lamp.  At this point, she started screaming.  Quite a loud cry for such a little peanut.  

My doctor is the greatest.  He wasn't on call that day, but was still there to check on me all night and for the deliver the in the morning before heading to the office.