I was induced on Saturday June 23 during the night @ Miami Valley Hospital. I was 1 week overdue. When they started hooking me up to the monitors they said I was actually already in early labor & having some contractions of my own. An hour later they applied a Prostaglandin gel to me cervix to induce labor. My contractions began to come regularly & they were easy to get through, when they checked my 4 hours later I was already at 4 cm.
Then because they thought I was doing so well, instead of applying another dose of prostaglandin, the nurse decided to start pitocin to make the labor progress faster. It didn't work. They kept on upping the dosage until they reached the maximum amount they can give a person safely w/o risking damaging the uterus, which could detach from the inner wall if the contractions were too strong as a result of the strong pitocin doses. 4 hours later no progress, another 4 hours later still no progress!
Finally after 24 hours of hard pitocin induced labor & no sleep, I convinced the nurses to call my doctor & get permission to stop the pitocin & restart the Prostaglandin gel (since it was the only thing that worked). About 4 more hours llater I was completely exhausted from the Pitocin & asked for an epidural b/c I had no energy left, I was able to handle the contractions, but I was so worn down that I was afraid I would have no energy when the time came to push the baby out. So I finally got an epidural and a catheter, then they applied the prostaglandin gel. I finally went to sleep. I was sooo tired!
When I woke up about 3 hours later I felt alot of pressure down in my pelvic region towards the front.. I woke my mom up & told her what was going on, it felt like something was wrong w/ the catheter like they put it in wrong or it was coming out. We sat & started talking about what it could be for about 5 minutes. Right when we were about to press the Nurses' call button she came in & said, " We've been monitoring her heartrate & its started to get a little weird. We need to put an internal monitor on the baby to get a better reading." So another nurse came in & started to check & when she did she said "Wow, you're water broke & you're fully dilated at 10 cm & ready to push!, looks like we won't need to put this monitor in after all..."
Everyone in the room was asleep, my husband Ian, his mom Kathy, & my dad Bill. My mom started getting really excited. I was smiling b/c I had waited SOOO long to have the baby & it was finally time. My mom tried to nudge Ian awake, but he WOULDNT WAKE UP! She had to yell to get him awake. Finally everyone was up & excited to see the baby come.
It took about 45 minutes of pushing with the contractions to get her out.
Boy was I glad I got a few hours of sleep to re-energize my body!
After 36 hours of labor, Tziporah Marie Howard was finally brought forth into this world. |
