my labor and delivery story part one

phew!
the past few days have been like a complete whirlwind.
billy and i are like delusional robots of sleep deprived happiness.

tomorrow we get to go home from the hospital, so i thought i'd take a few minutes to recount the tale of mister finn's arrival while it's still somewhat fresh in my mind.

here we go!
wednesday night, at 11 days late, we arrived at the hospital for stage one of a medical induction.
it was such a surreal feeling... after having walked around in such suspense for the past month, wondering when everything was going to go down, and then after all of that just calmly packing our bags and heading into the hospital to have a baby!  it was so weird.  but we were in great spirits!

hospital bracelet on! there was no turning back!

billy was less excited about his personal cot after he actually tried laying on it.

i was a little disappointed at first that i wasn't going to be able to have the beautiful natural delivery i had dreamed of in the birthing center across the street from the hospital.  but i figured, everything happens for a reason, and maybe it will be better for us to be in a hospital setting.  boy was i right on that one!

so wednesday night we get checked in and set up at the hospital, they check me (still 2cm) and insert this little hormone called cervadil that is supposed to soften my cervix and prep me for a pitocin induction on thursday morning.
they put the cervadil in at about 8 o'clock, and they normally leave it in for 12 hours.
they gave me a sleeping pill so i could get a good nights rest to prepare for tomorrow.
worst decision ever.
i never slept.
about two hours later i started having contractions.
real contractions.
the sleeping pill made me really cranky and out of it but i couldn't actually sleep because of the labor.  it was awful.

after having walked around for months with regular and intense braxton hicks contractions and being declared the queen of prodromal (false) labor, i was SO ready to find out what real contractions felt like.
i will tell you.
they feel bad.
very bad.

i was totally expecting for my labor to feel empowering, for it to be a pain that was manageable, and i was so ready to try all these different positions and relaxation techniques...
i will be the first one to wholeheartedly admit to you (billy will be the second) natural labor?
not for me.
not.
for.
me.
everything i like to say about "our bodies are made for this" and "listen to your instincts", yes, they all may be true.  but my body's instincts were saying "this is for the birds!"
i was totally in agony.  i have huge respect for natural laborers after this experience, let me tell you.  oof.

so anyway, the pain from the contractions, to me, was totally blinding.  it caught me off guard completely.  i felt like someone was lighting my back on fire every time one hit.

early in the morning they took out the cervadil since it had put me into full fledged labor, and they made me get in the shower.  i was already begging for an epidural but they wouldn't give me one because i was only 3cm.  the shower felt really good, but the contractions were just getting worse.

the midwife came in and checked me after the shower and i was at 4cm and i felt like i was dying.  i actually don't really remember what i was doing but billy just says i was awful.  the one thing that did help though was kneeling on the bed and holding the back of it, and billy and the midwife would push down on my back every time a contraction hit.  it still felt like my whole body was going up in flames, but the counter-pressure made them much more manageable.

i was offered, and accepted, a drug called stadol (which was given in the form of a shot) to "take the edge off" of my contractions.  this was a bad decision for me.  the mixture of the sleeping pill with the stadol made me completely crazy.  i felt like i was hallucinating.  it actually did allow me to rest for about an hour, but it didn't take the edge off of my pain.  i was just "resting" because i felt paralyzed.  i still felt the contractions miserably, but i was so out of it that i couldn't react to them.  i felt like i was locked in a box of agony and my head was all fuzzy and stuffed full of cotton balls.  billy said i was saying crazy things.

after the first hour of the stadol wore off i was back on my own dealing with the contractions.  i was begging for an epidural the whole time. (i know, i turned out to be such a wimp!)  finally, after another hour of labor and at 5cm, i got one.

all was right with the world.

i LOVED the epidural.
meg + epidural = love. forever. and ever. i can't tell you how much i loved it.

it was totally unlike anything i had imagined it would be.
i could still move my legs and feet, they just felt heavy.  i could still move and feel things, just not the contractions.  it was amazing!  i didn't have to have a catheter in, my brain felt normal again, and my body totally relaxed.
i was SO HAPPY.
and within an hour, i was 8cm dilated!

hooray!
my body reacted really well to the epidural.  it made my labor progress instead of stalling it out like i had feared, and i felt so much more normal.

my water broke on it's own about 20 minutes after i got the epidural.
there was meconium in it, which means that finn had pooped.
this is typical for an overdue baby, but it means that they kind of have to keep a watchful eye.
the nurse told me that someone from the NICU (neonatal intensive care) would be in the room when i delivered to take a look at him and make sure he hadn't inhaled any yuck during the delivery.  she also put an internal monitor on the baby's head so that they could keep a better watch on his heart rate and movements.

throughout my contractions, finn's heart rate was kinda weird.  he wasn't moving around a whole lot... he was kind of sluggish.  i think he was tired and stressed out from being in there so long too!  the nurses kept making me switch positions and eat popsicles to try and wake him up a bit.

at 11a.m., a few hours after my epidural, the midwife checked me and said i was 10cm and we could start pushing!  we were so excited.
the nurse and midwife both said that i was an excellent pusher, so we were feeling really enthused!
i pushed for about 30 minutes.
pushing was different than i expected.  you kind of think that pushing is all fast-moving, but it's not.  you have to wait for a contraction to push, and they come every 2 or 3 minutes, and then really you're only pushing for a minute.  so it's like push, wait for 3 minutes, push, wait for 3 minutes.  different than i expected.
at any rate, the midwife said she could see the baby's head when i pushed, that he had hair, and were just happily moving along.

then the next thing i knew, the midwife and the nurse were kind of anxiously looking at the baby's monitor.  i think the midwife said something like "do you want to get the doctor in here to look at this?" and then, at almost the same moment, the doctor comes busting through the door because she had already seen the monitor from her office.
the doctor said the baby's heart rate was really really high.  normally it's supposed to be around 130 bpm, and finn's was in the 190's.
the doctor checked my cervix and said that i still had some cervix left at the bottom that the midwife hadn't felt and i wasn't a full 10 centimeters.
then she told me that since finn was looking so weak during my contractions, and now was looking so crazy during me pushing, that this was a bad sign that he was soon going to kind of completely bail out on us and his heart rate totally crash.
she said that if she thought we could get him out quick in another 30 minutes or so of pushing with the help of a vacuum, that she would do it, but we were looking at more like an hour or more of pushing and we didn't have that much time.
then she said, "you need a c-section."
this all happened over a time period of about 45 seconds.

i felt like i was dreaming.  we were so close! i was pushing him OUT for pete's sake, and now i have to have a c-section? what the heck was going on?
i looked at billy.  he was totally white.  he almost passed out.  he totally freaked basically.
it was the last thing that we wanted.
but of course, we didn't want to put finn at risk.
we signed a paper, and then it was like someone hit fast forward and everything was a blur.