Monday, August 4

Labor & Delivery - Part 1

Sunday, July 13th

On Sunday morning I woke up and knew that I was in labor. I had been having pains since early in the morning but it wasn’t until I woke up that I realized what was going on. We were getting ready to go to church and so I didn’t tell Scott right away. At about 8:20 (10 minutes before we are suppose to leave for church) I realized that I had lost the remainder of my mucus plug and that church may not be the best option at this point. I decided to tell Scott at this point that I was indeed in labor. Being that I was now 11 days overdue and we had tried everything to speed up labor with no prevail, we were anxious to have this baby. We headed down to the mall to try to walk the baby out and enjoy the free air-conditioning. After walking the mall (a couple times) my contractions were approximately 10 minutes apart and so we headed home to take a shower and a nap.
Scott, being the patient husband that he is, insisted that we track the contractions by writing each and every contraction down on paper, when they got to be closer together, although not consistent (anywhere from 2 to 7 minutes apart) he loaded me up into the car and off we were to Riverside Community Hospital, all the time asking how I was doing, I think I was doing better than he was at this point! We checked into the hospital at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon and I was hooked up to monitors to see where I had progressed to.
Above is a picture of me as I was being checked into my room, my last pregnant belly shot, man I was pregnant! After being examined and wired up to monitors I was told that I was only 3 centimeters dilated which would not be enough to keep me in the hospital under normal circumstances but the monitors showed that the baby’s heart rate was “not doing what we want it to” according to the nurse. They told me because I was late term, the placenta was probably old and so the baby was not responding well to my contractions. Since I was to be induced Monday morning anyway, they were just going to keep me in the hospital in order to monitor the baby, so into bed I went.
So there I was with an IV in my left arm (my very first IV which I hated), a blood pressure gage on my right arm and two monitor strapped to my belly. We enjoyed seeing the rate of contractions go up and down, the baby’s heartbeat rise and drop and had a pleasant first couple of hours, playing cards, listening to music and just talking; my mother came to join us for a while as well. At 7:00, shift change, a new nurse came on named Rachelle (one of the only good experiences that I can remember). I had now been in bed for 4 ½ hours and still 3 centimeters dilated. They decided that since the baby still was not doing well, they were going to try and speed things up, I was given a suppository of some sort, inserted vaginally that was suppose to help induce labor. This quickly sped up my contractions, they started coming one right after the other, I felt as though I would come down from one contraction and the next one would start. They were close together (about 30 seconds apart) and much more intense, it was harder for me to concentrate but I just kept thinking it would be over soon. Rachelle, the nurse came back to check on me after 3 hours of intense contractions (10:00 at night) and I was now dilated to . . . only 3 centimeters . . .

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