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Labor, Surgery, and Delivery
2005-07-06, 5:47 a.m.

Well, since I'm up and the baby isn't (which, as I'll get to in this entry or the next, is pretty standard), perhaps now is a good time to put the birth story to print. As you know from previous updates, I went in for an unsuccessful induction on a Sunday about 10 or so days ago. Wow, has it been that long already?!? Gee, well... Anyway... They sent me home Tuesday afternoon and I was still having some really strong contractions but I figured that, like on Monday, they would eventually die down and I'd be back to Braxton-Hicks, if anything, in no time. Came home, took a nap, contracting all throughout... Got up and wrote my journal entry and eventually went back to bed. All through the night I was contracting something fierce. LONG, HARD contractions... Very painful. I was extremely uncomfortable and my sleep was, to say the least, very broken up. I only slept when I was so exhausted that I could sleep through a few of the contractions. So around 7 I got up and called the answering service for my doctor. The doctor on call (who, incidentally, ended up being the same doc who did my C-Section at 1:40 the following morning) said that it was probably still the Pitocin, there was no way to tell when it would wear off or how my body would react to it in the end but that it didn't sound like I was in labor. Call back when they are 5 minutes apart for over an hour, have a nice day.
So I went back to bed...
After another couple of hours of sleep, punctuated by intervals of intense pain I got up and timed my contractions at about an average of 4-5 minutes apart. Still, I waited till about 1 PM before I called back. They told me to go back to the hosptital. As added insurance, we didn't bring the cameras or re-pack the bag; we just got in the car and left. Turns out I was now 4 CM dialated and 100% effaced and I got to stay. Over a couple more hours (with no epidural yet, actually, so still in great pain) I progressed another couple of centimeters on my own. Then they gave me something to take the edge off which made me a little light-headed and, come to think of it now, I think that's when my labor slowed down. Shortly after that, they broke my water and that was when I really noticed things slowing down, which, of course, is unusual. My contractions were actually less painful after that and less frequent. Soon afterward, I got my epidural and the doctors blamed my slowing on that so I was back on the Pitocin (which, at this point, was no big deal since I couldn't feel the pain anymore). Very, very slowly I got up to about 9 cm dialated (around 11 PM or midnight, I guess it was), but got stuck there. Then, my C-section doc came in (showed him to tell me I wasn't in labor--ended up keeping him up all night long as revenge) and discovered that I was down to between 8 and 9 again and my cervix was getting "puffy." I had also been running a temperature for a couple of hours now and Jacks heartbeat had been consistently over normal at between 160-180 this whole last part. That all, I guess points to an infection setting in, so the doctor said it was time to move on to C-section. By this point, I was nearly asleep anyway. I actually had the hardest time keeping awake as they were prepping me and during the beginning of the surgery. Even now, I don't like to think about it. The thought of what I had done to me, I think (I HOPE), is way worse than the reality of it all. My husband watched the whole thing, periodically asking me, "Can you feel THAT?!?" I told him afterward that I don't want to know anything about what he saw. Frankly, I kind of wish I could've been put out for it. And as a word of warning, C-sections are not performed as swiftly as they look like they are on television. Maybe they can do it faster in an emergency, but otherwise, no. It took about 10-15 minutes for them to get the baby out and at least twice that long to put me back together.
So that's how little Jack made his entrance into the world (I heard the doctor say as he was pulling him out that he'd bit him, hehe. Serves him right). I'd like to say it's been business as usual since then, but actually, after that was when things really started to get dramatic. Everything has turned out all right in the end, so far, so I'll conclude my story later..........

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