And so it begins...Birth Story

2/9/07
We went to bed at 9:30 p.m. I woke up at midnight and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I started reading The Bleak house which is a book that I would read whenever I couldn’t sleep throughout the pregnancy. It is perfect for night reading because it is a very large book with a slow moving storyline. Three hours later I was eight pages from reaching the end of the book when my water broke. I was surprised and overwhelmed at the thought of this being IT! I woke up Jason and it took us a few minutes to collect our thoughts. I called my OB and she told us to head over to the hospital as quickly as possible. I woke up my Mom and we scrambled around the house like maniacs to get everything together. The ride to the hospital was uneventful (it’s only five minutes from the house).

At 4:15 a.m. we were set up in our hospital room and then we waited…and waited… and waited. My contractions were not getting anymore intense or frequent and I was only 1cm dilated. By 9:00 a.m. I was still only 1cm dilated and so we agreed to start Pitocin. Here is where it gets fun – my contractions hit around 9:30 and were very intense and only 3 minutes apart. 11:00 a.m. – 2 hours of good quality contractions but still no dilation. 12:00 p.m. – still no dilation so they moved my pitocin dose up to the highest level. We tried everything we could think of to get the stupid cervix to open – the birthing ball, doing lunges, and all of the silly positions we learned in our childbirth class. My contractions became horribly painful and were only 30 seconds apart and it was getting very hard to keep ahead of them mentally – breathing techniques can only do so much.

At 2:00 p.m. I still had not dilated any further and the doctor recommended that I take an epidural in hopes that maybe it would assist with dilation. I, no longer caring about a huge needle being put in my back, rapidly agreed and the epidural was administered around 2:30 p.m. Jason watched them do the epidural and came close but did not faint.

Wow! What a difference. I was chatting it up and laughing through my contractions now. Mmmm.. epidural. Somewhere around 4:00 the nurse came in and said the baby was showing signs of distress. His heart rate was dropping and his movements were slowing. She mentioned that I was entering c-section territory but they would give me another hour or so. 15 minutes later the doctor came in and said we needed to do a c-section right away since his heart rate was dropping and not recovering.

While having a c-section was less than ideal, as soon as it became clear that the baby was in trouble there was no question. There was a flurry of activity in prep and it seemed I was being wheeled back to the OR within minutes. The c-section went well and Vince was born at 5:21 p.m. It was an incredible moment when we first heard his cry. Jason and I just looked at each other kind of dumbfounded…