Brooklyn's Birth Day

I had a scheduled induction on August 25 at 4 am, but had had about 2 false alarms in the prior 2 weeks that just sent me home. I had an appointment on August 22nd to get my cervix checked and I had been having contractions while at the doctor's office. I was dilated to a 3 and very soft. About an hour later, my contractions started getting more frequent and painful. I decided to stop and get a pedicure before my induction and the whole time I was cringing from the contractions. (I was trying to own it up to cramping from the exam).. well at about 5:15, I started timing them and keeping track. At about 8 or so, I told DH we needed to go to the hospital because I was in so much pain and felt like LO was coming..

Trip 1: we show up to the hospital around 9:30pm, they monitor my contractions (coming regularly every 5 minutes and pretty high scale) and I was only dilated to a 3 so they said I wasn't making any progress and gave me a shot of demerol and sent me home. The nurse said to come back in if I woke up having more and that I couldn't sleep through them. She also said to call when we were on our way. Lo and behold, After getting to sleep at 11pm, I woke up at 2:30am with the most excruciating pain (contractions and back contractions that I was moaning and groaning through)... I called DH (as he had been sleeping downstairs so he could get some sleep for work) and told him they're back. 

Trip 1.5:  Half way to the hospital, we call. My contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and they said to go home and wait it out for an hour until they were 2-3 minutes apart... I wanted to die!!! I was holding on to every handle in the car and started crying that I had to go back home. DH made me sit in the shower like he was instructed and I did that for about 20 minutes, while having more and more contractions of course... and I had to pee... so I get up to pee and a ton of blood came out (A huge chunk of bloody show TMI) so I said I don't care, we're going. I called the nurse and said I was coming back in... and she said I could get sent home again.. (GRR)

Trip 2: So, finally on our way to the hospital a 3rd time at around 4am and we get pulled over on our freeway exit for speeding (the one time I approve of DH speeding) and the cop ended up letting us go because we had a legitimate excuse... I get checked in and I'm dilated to a 5 already and they said they would finally take me in! THANK GOODNESS!! They send me to the room and I am practically begging for the epidural. Within 2 hours (thankfully with an epidural) I was dilated to a 7 and they only had me on pitocin for 30 minutes because my body was doing it on its own... My epidural starts to wear off on my left side... so they have to fix that. At around 7:15am, my doctor gave the OK to break my water (he had a scheduled csection that morning, grr) and I progressed to a 10 extremely fast. Since my doctor was still operating, I had to wait... they wanted to let LO progress down the canal and move her way closer as much as possible before we started pushing. At around 11:45, we were finally able to start pushing... the nurse said I pushed extremely well and had high hopes... until she realized my pelvis was extremely small.. and had to get the doctor and see what he thought. He said I may need to use the vacuum or have a c-section... I just wanted to see my baby girl healthy... but she was stuck. My doctor let me keep pushing for another half hour and he had to come in around 1:15 to do the actual delivery. At 1:23 p.m., Brooklyn Grace was born, 8lbs. 4 oz. 18' long, with a conehead (not due to vacuum!!) and I had excessive internal tears and my baby was taken to the NICU while I was stitched up for over 30 minutes.... I guess almost 2 hours of pushing isn't necessarily a good thing..

I was wheeled to a room about an hour later and still hadn't seen my baby. It wasn't until 7pm that I got to see her and I couldn't stand up or even hold her because she was in a NICU bed with an oxygen dome over her face and monitors hooked up all around. I got to back at midnight (If I was able to stand) and feed her (formula, not by choice, but they didn't want her exhausted trying to breastfeed) and she got her oxygen dome taken off... she ended up having respiratory distress and was having a lot of trouble breathing.  She was down to 7lbs2oz. and wasn't wanting to feed very well. After 4 days, we were both released (I had labial edema and the doctor kept me for monitoring)... 

We are all now home, healthy, and exhausted, but every little bit was worth it!!