July 31, 2009

This is a long time coming and something I have been meaning to do since Drake was born. Finally 9 1/2 months later his birth story is complete.

July 31, 2009 was suppose to be just like any other day. The night before Ben and I enjoyed a spur of the moment date at our favorite Thursday evening farmers market. We walked around, ate some gyros and did some shopping while enjoying the beautiful weather. Little did we know this would be our last night as a family of two.

1 day before Drake was born

I was 38 weeks and 1 day pregnant on July 31, 2009. I had just been to the doctor the morning before and had zero progress. I decided to work from home on the 31st. I started my morning off with a little housework, decided to type out my full maternity leave plan for work, made brownies to drop off to Ben at work, and then around 4:00 pm I decided to take a nap. I slept for about a half hour and woke up feeling better than I had in weeks. I got up out of bed and was getting ready to leave for the grocery store when all of the sudden my water broke. I know everybody can have different experiences with their water breaking, but mine was like in the movies, it broke and EVERYTHING was soaked in a matter of seconds!!!

After having a minor freak out, that the baby was coming now, I called Ben, my OB, and my mom. Ben rushed home from work, we put our last minute essentials in our bags and headed to the hospital. Once arriving they immediately admitted me since there was no doubt I was in labor since my water broke. My labor nurse got us all set up in our room and proceed to check to see if I was dilated. I dealt with a extremely posterior cervix during my pregnancy, meaning that it was super hard for the doctors to reach and sometimes almost impossible to feel. After much discomfort for me and a lot of trying on the nurses part, she was unable to feel my cervix (she said that had never happened to her before) so she called the OB on call so she could come in and try. While we waited for the OB, I had an ultrasound preformed to make sure the baby was head down, the nurse was unable to tell by feeling and wanted to confirm. The ultrasound confirmed that the baby was head down and looking good. Shortly after the ultrasound the OB arrived and also had an extremely difficult time finding my cervix, after a lot of screaming and crying on my part (this was literally the worst part of giving birth for me) she was able to find it and tell us I was 3 cm. dilated.  Thankfully the OB said because of the extreme location of my cervix I was not to be checked again until after I had my epidural.

By now it was around 7:00 pm. I was feeling really great, even though the monitor said I was having regular contractions I was only feeling slight cramping.  My OB wanted me to labor a bit on my own and then start me on Pitocin at 10:00 pm so I would hopefully have a baby by noon the next day. Ben and I spent the next several hours leisurely walking the hallways and talking with my parents. I was able to take a nice long hot shower before they stared my IV at 10:00 pm. My parents said their good-byes and my nurse came in to get my IV line in so we could start the Pitocin. After a bit of a struggle with the the insertion of the IV, the Pitocin was started and an epidural was ordered, as we needed to see how far dilated I was

My contractions were getting closer together, but I still could not feel them. I chatted with Ben and my labor nurse while we waited for the anesthesiologist to come, in the meantime the clock struck midnight.
To be continued...