When we arrived at the hospital, we had to wait about an hour for one of the labor and delivery rooms to open up. I wept the whole time we were sitting in the waiting room. And then I started to feel really guilty because there were two other women waiting as well, and they were clearly excited about having their babies. Also, they had chosen this hospital over other places. I felt like a horrible person sitting there being upset because I wasn't going to be giving birth in the birth center. Our baby was full term, healthy, and I was there just in case anything were to go wrong. I had no right to be as upset as I was. Of course, that only made me upset about being upset which led to more weeping.
We finally got to our room about 11AM. Carrie, our Centering midwife, was the midwife on duty that day. She met us in the room and we talked about what was going to happen. They started me on a round of Cervidil, a drug to help ripen the cervix before labor. It takes 12 hours to complete the cycle, so we knew we were going to be there for a while. We had some lunch, watched some episodes of Bones, and just generally hung out. Zach brought us some Chinese take-out for dinner so we wouldn't have to eat hospital food. We both went to bed at 9ish to try to get some sleep before meeting with the midwife again at 1AM. I was only 1 cm dilated, so the midwife recommended another round of Cervidil. I started to notice some pretty regular contractions at about 2AM and they continued until morning. I didn't get much sleep that night because I was too freaked out about everything and the hospital bed was pretty uncomfortable. Joe camped out on the couch-thing that was in the room. Here's a picture I took of him before he woke up.
As my contractions got stronger, I found that I was REALLY uncomfortable being in the bed. I was pretty restricted in my movement because I had to be on the fetal monitor and blood pressure cuff constantly. There was enough slack in the wires for me to stand next to the bed or sit on a labor ball. I stood for a while, and kind of paced/rocked back and forth. Then the nurse brought me a labor ball and suggested I try sitting on that. It was amazing. I had brought a notebook along to keep track of things and the last thing I wrote at 10:30AM was "Labor ball = awesome."
Carrie's shift ended, and the midwife on call for Friday was CiCi, and she was training a midwife, Maya. At 1PM I was 2 cm dilated. I was hoping to use as few medications as possible, so the midwife suggested we try something called Balloon Catheter. Basically, it is a contraption that is made up of two balloons, one goes behind your cervix and one below and they each get filled with saline. Then it applies pressure and manually helps the cervix open and thin out. Having that inserted was possibly the most painful thing I have ever experienced (up to that point, I guess). However, it worked like a charm. My contractions were almost instantaneously stronger and more regular. The plan was to leave the Foley Bulb in until I was about 4 cm dilated, and then to have my water broken at 6 cm. Just after the Foley Bulb was put in the Pitocin was started as well to make sure that labor kept progressing. The midwife was very explicit in her directions to the nurse, we were going to start with 1 unit of Pitocin, and work up to NO MORE than 4 units over the next 4 hours. Ten minutes later there was a shift change, and we got a new nurse, Carol.
Up to this point, the nurses had been super awesome. They all knew that we were from the Birth Center, and that being in the hospital and getting induced was not our choice. They made sure that we were using as few drug interventions as possible, and were pretty lax about keeping the monitors in place (they kept losing the baby's heartbeat because she was wiggling around so much and the blood pressure cuff kept falling off). The baby's heartbeat was strong whenever it was measured, and my blood pressure had been low the whole time I was there so there was no real pressing need to be continuously monitored. Then came Carol. Carol was mid-40's and definitely a proponent of the "traditional hospital birth" (read: Pitocin, epidural, done).
By now the only position that was comfortable for me was on my hands and knees on the bed. I had the IV in my left arm, but the drip was on the right side of the bed and the monitors were on the left side of the bed so there was a tangle of tubing and cables. Carol insisted on keeping all of the monitors going all of the time and that I wear the blood pressure cuff on my right arm (another cable to drape across the bed). She was obviously annoyed that I refused to just lie down on my back and give up. She was adjusting the monitors every 3 minutes or so, regardless of the timing of my contractions. It is extremely distracting to have someone squirting goo on your stomach and sliding a small disk around and readjusting a belt while trying to focus and breathe through a contraction. I was annoyed at the time, but now that I think about it more I'm really angry at how invasive she was.
She kept asking Joe to move from the position I needed him to be in so she could fix the stupid blood pressure cuff. The best place for him to be was at the head of the bed where I could hold his hands and press my forehead against his during the worst part of the contractions. That meant he had to carefully weave his way through all the cables and tubing and every time the blood pressure cuff fell off he had to move and then come back. Once you've figured out how to make it through a contraction, the last thing you need is to have someone say no you can't do that. It was particularly frustrating because this could have all been solved by putting the cuff on my left arm, and we suggested we do that, but she was having none of it.
Aside from being stubborn and doing everything possible to make me uncomfortable, she apparently missed the notes from the midwife about the Pitocin administration. Usually, they push it much faster, but because we wanted as little intervention as possible and the Foley Bulb had worked so great they were going to use as little as possible. Unknown to us, Carol had other plans. There was another birth happening that the midwives had to attend to, so Joe and I were left alone with Carol at about 2PM. This whole time each contraction was significantly more intense than the last with only a couple of minutes between each one. Also, the baby was posterior (sunny side up), which meant I was having back labor. It's really hard to describe what that feels like. The baby's head presses on your spine so that when you contract the pain shoots through your entire body. It feels a bit like hitting your funny bone, but a thousand times harder, and throughout your whole skeleton. Between each contraction I was shaking uncontrollably either from exhaustion or pain, probably both.
Weeks earlier, Joe and I had discussed the use of pain-killers during labor in case the baby was posterior. I absolutely did not want an epidural, but the Birth Center (as well as the hospital) offers some other, milder drugs that do not interfere with breast feeding. We had decided that if I was having back labor, and it was becoming unbearable I would use one of those. Well, we got to that point at about 4:30PM. I was weeping and hyperventilating with each contraction. Joe asked to have CiCi paged so we could talk about our options. Just as CiCi arrived, Carol was about to administer the next dose of Pitocin, 10 units worth! CiCi was like, um, please stop I don't think she needs any more as I was writhing in pain. Carol had administered more than twice the amount in half the time that the midwives had ordered. This explained why my contractions were intensifying so quickly. Things were progressing so fast in fact that my body wasn't able to keep up. Because each contraction was worse than the last, I never had a chance to recover or prepare for the next one and my body couldn't produce enough of its own pain killers. While CiCi was explaining the different kinds of drugs I could take, my water broke, with the Foley Bulb still in. Cici removed the Foley Bulb manually, and gave me one dose of Fentanyl, a narcotic that stays in your system for about an hour. At 5:30PM I was 7 cm dilated. Before giving me the Fentanyl, CiCi had asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad the pain was, and I said 10. After an hour of Fentanyl, she asked again and I said 9.5. Apparently everyone thought this was hilarious. I don't know that it actually helped dull the pain at all, but it definitely helped me calm down enough to focus and breathe through it.
Then, about half an hour later the contractions suddenly intensified even more, and the midwives had me lie down on my side because I was collapsing between each one. Apparently, this was transition. I remember screaming through 2 or 3 contractions, whereas previously it had just been a low-pitched moan, and then I knew I had to push or I was convinced I was going to die. So I hopped back up on my hands and knees (ok, hopped is an exaggeration) and away we went. After a while the midwives said you could see the head and asked if either Joe or I wanted to touch it. We both definitely did not. I just wanted to be done, and I wanted Joe to stay where he was. Then, at 7:30PM after two really hard, really long pushes, there she was! The midwives laid her on the bed beneath me (I was still on hands and knees) and told me to lie on my side so they could put her on my stomach. I was a little disoriented and was terrified I was going to crush her, I couldn't really tell where she was. Eventually I was lying down, and she was on top of me. At some point, I don't really know when, Joe cut the cord and they took her off to the side to get cleaned up a little and have her vitals taken.
Here's a picture of Joe holding her in the recovery room after her mandatory stay in the nursery. She was 6lbs 1oz and 18.5 inches long.
