Freshly Squeezed

kissamary · September 2013

Short: Induction went amazing. Started at 7am on Thursday, active labor by 5pm, born after a little over an hour of pushing at 1201am on Friday the 13^th!

Long:

We checked in on Thursday the 12^th for our scheduled induction to evict the tiny squatter. They started Pitocin at 7am, but stopped it around 745 because it wasn’t agreeing with her heart rate. The tiny dose they gave me was enough to kick my irregular contractions into consistent ones, though. By 11ish they said I was at a 5. I was able to get up and go pee and my contraction pain went from maybe a 3 to a 0. A full bladder and contractions do not mix. The doctor finally made it over between births around 2pm and broke my water. She didn’t say anything at the time because she didn’t want to second guess my awesome nurse, but she felt I was more at a 3 than a 5. She encouraged me to go ahead and get an epidural if I wanted to because she was sure I would excel quickly, and with my high pain tolerance, I didn’t want to get stranded in no-pain meds land. The contractions immediately kicked up in consistency and duration, but the pain still was very minimal. I got an epidural within the half hour, and the worst part was the water gushing out with each contraction while I sat there and waited. I hate being wet!

The doctor checked me around 5pm and said she thought I was a good 6cm and officially in active labor. They wanted to try the Pitocin again to see if they could ramp up the consistency and duration of my contractions but had to turn it off after about 45 minutes again. Once again it was just enough to get them going. Around 7 they tried it again, and she finally tolerated it. I was an 8 by 830. Around 1015 I was a 9.5, and by 1040 I was ready to push. It took over an hour to get her head under the bone, which was annoying because she was so close the entire time. None of the pushing hurt until her head was half out. I had made the mistake of reading through another month’s birth stories and came across a woman who experienced a hood tear. That’s where my pain was, so I was having trouble making myself push through the pain for the last 30 seconds because that story freaked my freak. I unknowingly already had a second degree tear and a pretty awesome hemorrhoid at this point, but those were never bothersome and have almost healed up already at a week out.

Rayleigh Love was born at 1201am weight 7lbs6oz (which I guessed on the nose) and measuring at 21.75 inches! She has my long fingers, dad’s long skinny feet, and tons of dirty blonde hair. She is a ridiculously good baby. 6 days old and I have only really heard her cry when she was born and when she had to get her baby blood squeezed for her bilirubin test. She is an amazing eater (no latch problems from the get-go) and is already up .5 of an ounce as of today’s check-up. She sleeps great at night and is already daddy’s princess.