Brooke's (very late) birth story

CarrieAnne09 · December 2014

Two and a half weeks later I finally have this story typed up. I wanted to have it so that I don't forget the day. It all seems like a blur to me now:

The short version: I laboured for 20 hours before deciding that a c section was needed. Brooke Violet Deacon was born at 9:57PM weighing a shocking 9lbs 6oz and 21 inches long.

The long version: I had been having a couple days of contractions after my 39 week appointment and membrane sweep but they never got closer together or more intense. The day before my due date I decided I needed to turn this false labor into the real deal so I spent the whole day organizing our basement. At about 6PM I was feeling contractions but again nothing special so I did more walking around the house and went up and down our stairs. I fell asleep at around 10PM and I was startled awake at 1AM to a terrible contraction that felt never ending and I knew that this was the real deal. I started timing the contractions and laboured at home until they started getting closer together. They were 6 minutes apart but I was having lots of contractions that were around 3 minutes apart. Because I'm GBS positive I called and they said to head in. I woke up DH at around 4 and he got ready, packed the car and we left.

We were up in L&D by 5:30AM and a they monitored my contractions and baby's heart for about half hour. I was then checked and I was still only 1cm dilated. Which was a little disheartening. The nurse rechecked me after we paced the halls for an hour and I was at a 3! Progress. Another hour of walking the halls and I was at a 5! In 2 hours I went from 1cm to 5cm. I was finally admitted and put into a delivery room around 9AM. I laboured for a bit longer but the back labour was so intense I had to get an epidural. I was hoping to hold out a little longer for one but I just couldn't. Once the epi was placed I felt so much relief. The next couple hours were great - my mom, DH and I just sat and talked. I napped a bit. They checked me again around 12:30 and I had progressed to 6cm. Not the progress I had before but it was progress. They decided to start oxytocin to see if they could get her head to move down at all. They checked me about an hour later to see if she had descended at all so they could break my water - as soon as the resident touched my cervix my water broke. I was also at 7cm! They continued to up my oxytocin but my epidural was fading. I got a quick top up and hoped for the best.
This is where things got ugly for me. My epidural kept wearing off on my left side - we later found out it was because of the way Brooke's head was wedged into the left side of my pelvis. For the next 5 hours I made absolutely no progress. My cervix started to swell and I actually made progress backwards. I cried everytime they checked me.
My saving grace was that my OB came in at 6pm so I was able to talk to her. At 7:30 she told me that Brooke's head wasn't descended enough and her head also wasn't molding to make it easier for her to pass through my birth canal. She said we'd wait 2 more hours and if I hadn't made anymore progress a c-section was likely. After she left the room I broke down crying and told DH I didn't think I could handle another two hours. My epidural had just worn off again and my whole left side hurt - it was excruciating. We talked it out and I decided I didn't want to wait 2 more hours - I wanted a c-section now. I just felt like Brooke wasn't going to come on her own - I was mentally and physically done. I called my OB back in and told her my decision. She smiled and told me she agreed with me but didn't want to push a c-section because Brooke was still doing so well inside. She told me to trust my intuition and they started prepping me for surgery.
The c-section hurt - a lot. I don't think the epidural worked as well as it should have along my left side and I felt a lot of what they were doing. Not just pressure but pain as well. When they started trying to get her out they discovered how wedged she really was. They had to use forceps to get her out as well as someone jumping up and down on top of my stomach (or that's what it felt like anyways). The nurse and my OB both told me that I made the right decision and that Brooke most likely would have never come out on her own. At 9:57pm my beautiful little girl FINALLY made her debut into the world. When I heard her first cry all the pain from the last 20 hours was barely even a memory