Birth Story w/ PIP! (late)

Z.ea Ad.eline was born on May 10^th at 5:10am weighing 8 lbs, 10 oz and 22.5 inches long!  I can?t believe 3 weeks have gone by already!

I?m so excited to see all of the posts about the new little ones being born!

The long version:

Wednesday May 8^th, we got everything together and headed to the hospital for the 6:30pm induction.  When we got there, the staff seemed surprised that we hadn?t called first, even though my doctor just said to show up? that they?d be expecting us.  Turns out, there was a huge emergency on the unit, and the unit was packed already, so they were  canceling all scheduled inductions.  Luckily they told us to hang out.  At 9:00, they were able to get us into a room.  I had been having contractions about every 4-5 minutes all evening, but still wasn?t dilated, so they started the Cervadil treatment at 9:30pm.

I was told to try to rest, but I hardly slept at all? maybe an hour total.  I had finally dozed for a few minutes, only to be woken up by my water breaking at 5:15am.  They had to remove the cervadil at that point, but told me that the doctor would be in at around 8 or 9 to start the pitocin.  There was meconium in the fluid, so the nurse told me NICU would have to come check the baby at delivery. 

9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am and no doctor.  I finally find out there?s an emergency on the unit again, so no one is on pitocin.  (I guess they didn?t want to speed up delivery for anyone if staffing was tight?. makes sense)  I?d been contracting pretty regularly at 3 minute intervals, so I was hoping that I made progress, but I hadn?t been checked since I got there the night before.  Since my water was broken, checking just increased risk for infection, so they wouldn?t do it unless necessary.  Found out later that they wouldn't have put me on pitocin anyway since I was contracting on my own.

At around 3:00pm, I was really in some pain and was exhausted.  I hadn?t gotten more than 3 hours of sleep each night that week.  Standing was the most comfortable, but was also taking it?s toll on my energy levels. 

By 6:00pm, the back/sciatic pain was becoming unbearable, and I was having really sharp pains every time the baby moved in addition to the contractions.  At 7pm, I gave in and asked for an epidural, even though I was hoping to deliver without pain medication. 

I felt like a wimp because the nurse was telling me that I was in early/pre labor and that my contractions were mild-moderate.  They did a check right after the epidural, and I was only 2cm. Talk about frustrating! The epidural actually ended up speeding things up since my body was finally able to rest and relax a little. 

I started pushing at 3:00am on FRIDAY!  The doctor left for almost an hour, and when she returned, she said I hadn?t made any progress, so they decided to intervene with the vacuum.  With the help of the vacuum, baby Z.ea was born at 5:10am? almost exactly 24 hours from the time my water broke!  I know that if the vacuum hadn?t worked, it would have been a c-section at that point.

I never anticipated that the labor process would be sooo long.  30+ hours without food or sleep didn't help.  

I had started running a fever right before delivery, so I only got to see my baby for a few seconds before she was whisked away to NICU for antibiotics.  It took 48 hours for them to run a culture to make sure she didn?t have an infection, so she had to stay in NICU for our entire hospital stay.  Luckily, everything came back negative and we were all able to head home on Mother?s Day.  It made nursing difficult at first, but by 5 days pp, I was exclusively breastfeeding!

And here's the real reason you opened this thread!: