Guess I was right!

So last Thursday I posted about possibly being in labor. Well I guess I was right!

Right around 2 am on Thursday 2/16, I lost my mucous plug. Shortly thereafter I began having period-like cramps. They didn't intensify and kind of appeared sporadically. I was able to drift back to sleep. Around 4 I woke up again and started having more cramping. I told my husband when his alarm went off at 5 that I might be in labor, and he opted to stay home. Good DH! The cramping was still sporadic and not very strong, but around 8:30 I had bloody show. I took a shower and wandered for a bit. I decided to go for a walk to see if I could accelerate things. Well it must have worked! We hadn't gotten very far when I had a much stronger contraction, so we headed back home and took our dog to Petsmart where we planned to board him while we were in the hospital. By the time we got back home my contractions had gone from about 10 min apart to 9. Upon the recommendation of my mother, I called the doctor's office. (I was already 5 days late and was GBS positive.) They had me come into the office to do a cervix check. By the time I got to the doctor's office, my contractions had started coming much closer together -- now about 4-5 minutes apart. The doctor said I was about 3 cm dilated (up from 2 cm on Tuesday) and 80% effaced. He recommended I go home for a couple of hours, then head to the hospital. So that's what we did.

We got to the hospital around 5:45. My cervix had only dilated to 4 cm, but things looked good, so I labored for a bit. The doctor ended up breaking my water to accelerate the process, and a little while later decided to start pitocin. I got an epidural shortly before starting the pitocin, and I was feeling pretty relaxed. After another couple of hours in labor, I was checked again. Only at 5 cm, and the baby was still in -3 position. It was looking like several more hours at least before I had my baby. In addition, my contractions weren't steady and every time I had a contraction the baby's heartbeat dipped ever-so-slightly (nothing dangerous, but they didn't know why). The baby was also positioned with his head tilted back, not chin tucked.

After discussing everything that was going on, it was determined that the best course of action was a c-section. DH and I discussed it, and while he wasn't thrilled with it (I wasn't either, but I wasn't looking forward to a vaginal birth anyway!) we decided that we had to do what was right for the baby and for me. So we prepped for surgery.

Avery Robert was born at 1:17 am on Friday, 2/17. He weighed 7 lb 10 oz and was 19 inches long. He is perfect in every way and everyone who meets him loves him. While the unplanned c-section has extended our hospital stay, everyone has been super nice and we're been able to get help with breastfeeding and such while we're here. All in all not a bad experience. And we've got our little peanut to more than make up for it!