My Labor Story

Here it is...it isn't graphic, but feel free to skip it if you're not interested in reading this kind of stuff!

Thursday night, I woke up with contractions. I had regular but mild contractions for about an hour and a half and then they stopped. Friday, I started getting contractions at about 4:30 or 5 in the afternoon. I didn't think much of it, because I figured they'd stop too. We went to a cookout at our friends' house, and the contractions continued. They weren't very painful. We got home, put Isabella to bed, and while we were laying on the couch watching tv, I started timing them. They were about 10 minutes apart, at which point I (finally) told Nick I was having them. Shortly afterwards, they began getting more painful, especially in my back. At midnight, I took a hot shower and then started walking around my den in circles (I literally walked in circles around my couch for about 2 hours). The combination of the shower and the walking really seemed to help. They started getting closer together but weren't as painful. We finally called the OB - my favorite midwife was on duty!! They were about 3-6 minutes apart and increasingly more painful when we finally went to the hospital. My dad came to stay with Isabella and my sister came to the hospital with us.

Good news - I was at 5 cm already!! However, pretty much as soon as I got to the hospital, the contractions began to slow down. To a crawl. At about 4:00, I was SO TIRED and all I wanted to do was sleep. I had only about 2 contractions in half an hour. If I hadn't been so overdue, they probably would have sent me home. But at that point, I was having this baby!! Even though the pain wasn't unbearable at this point, I was tired, really, really tired, and knew I had a long road ahead to make it to 10 cm and push her out. So I opted for an epidural, after which, Vicki broke my water and started me on Pitocin shortly afterwards. The Picocin was working slowly but surely. When we went to the hospital at around 2 am, I thought surely we'd have a baby by breakfast. At 5:00 or so when I was only 6 cm and the Pitocin was taking its sweet time to increase my contractions, we gave up hope for a breakfast baby.

Wait wait wait all morning. Finally I got checked at around 11 or so. I was 10 cm!! But the baby was only at about station -1 or -2 (-5 is when she's at the bottom of the birth canal, ready to come out) and the epidural was working SO WELL that I didn't feel the urge to push. So she sat me up in bed hoping that gravity would pull Bailey down a little bit. That worked! I finally got to start pushing. That was actually pretty difficult because I couldn't feel anything so figuring out how to move the right muscles was difficult. It was hard work but not painful. But I wasn't complaining a bit. With Isabella, the epidural had worn off on my left side so I could feel the contractions on half of my body plus I could feel everything "down there", so pushing her out was by far the most difficult hour I had ever spent in my life. With Bailey, things were very calm and controlled. And absolutely pain free. I felt good enough to watch the process in the mirror, so I got to see her come out! My contractions still weren't coming close enough together during pushing (at one point - 5 minutes apart!), so they kept upping the Pitocin. But finally, they helped out enough and I pushed for about 50 minutes. Her head came out but then her shoulder got stuck and Nona had to kind of pull her on out of there. Annie was right in there, holding my leg this time. Nick also let her cut the umbilical cord!! It was a very special day for all of us, made a little easier by the wonderfully wonderful epidural. I was hoping for a short enough labor/pushing to try without the epidural but that wasn't in the cards. So much for your second labor being shorter! Not for me, but at least it was much easier this time. And I think that the pain-free pushing allowed more control and less trauma, so my recovery has been pretty painless too, which is a big change from last time.

Due to the relatively short and easy pushing, Bailey had a little fluid left in her lungs that kept giving us a scare the first 24-36 hours of her little life. But all is good now! This was a great pregnancy and great labor and now I have a second great little girl!