Caedmon's Birth Story {part 2}

Read part 1 {Here}

7:30am

I was finally able to be wheeled out of triage and into my labor and delivery room.  The nurses were doing shift change so I had three different ones come in to do my check in papers.  I was asked if I wanted an epidural in case I did do a vbac and without hesitation I said, "yes!"  I know my body and the very low pain tolerance that I have and had no qualms with accepting something that made those contractions (once I started feeling them) go away.  So the anesthesiologist came in to tell me about what to expect.

After all that commotion we were left alone for quite awhile, while my contractions and Caedmon were being monitored.  We waited for my Dr. (who actually happened to be the one on call that day) to come in and talk to us.  A couple hours passed by with no change and I was SO bored.  I was on facebook actually chatting with another girl in my mom's group who was getting induced the same day just at a difference hospital.  It made me laugh that we were both having babies the same day and just messaging back and forth during labor :)

Good thing Tyler painted my toes for me a couple days before hand :)

11:00am

Since my contractions were regular, my Dr. just took his time coming to see us.  Which was fine but waiting around was killing me.  He came in and asked what I wanted to do.  If I wanted to just go ahead with a c-section or do something about getting my contractions going.  I asked what we could do and he said he could give me up to half the regular amount of pitocin.  This was news to me because I had thought all along that if you wanted to vbac that there was absolutely no type of induction.  The risk of uterine rupture without an induction is 1% and with an induction it increases to 1.5%.

This was so hard for me to make this decision because after just sitting in my labor and delivery room all morning with no change, I was leaning more towards a c-section because I didn't want to just sit around all day hoping for a vbac and ending up with a c-section anyways.  In a way I was ready to just give up. So I asked a very unfair question to my Dr. :)

"What would you advise your wife to do if she was in my situation?" tee hee

(thanks Megan for telling me to do that!)

He said, after a couple minutes of thought...."I would tell her we have a level 3 NICU and O.R. right

down the hall and to go for it."

It was all I needed to hear and I was given a new sense of "Ok, I can do this!"

12:00pm

They started me on pitocin and increased a little every half hour.  They only gave me half the normal amount and wouldn't go over that.  I could definitely tell it was working.  Those contractions started coming right away.  They were strong but I was able to relax and breathe inbetween them.  They were about 3-4 minutes apart for a couple hours.  I would doing "ok" with the pain.  My nurse checked me right when they started the pitocin and I was 1-2cm dilated.  So I was trying to make it as far as I could before asking for an epidural because I knew they are know to slow things down.

The best position for enduring those painful contractions was sitting up in a rocking chair and leaning over as far forward as I could, almost in a fetal position (as much as my bulging belly would allow :).  My nurse kept coming in wondering what I was doing during the contractions because they would keep losing Caedmon's heart rate when I would bend over like that.  She tried a few different things because they wanted to see how he was handling the contractions (he was doing great).  I tried to sit differently but nothing helped except to bend over.

Tyler was trying everything he could to help distract me and so he was looking for movies on TV and I'm crazy and wanted to watch the movie, "Knocked Up."  The nurses thought I was hilarious watching this movie about pregnancy and birth while I'm in labor.  I joked with them that I was gonna be in labor forever and Katherine Heigl's character was going to get pregnant, have her entire pregnancy and actually have her baby before me!  But the movie did help to distract me a little.  When that stopped working, Tyler when down to the gift shop and bought some cards so we could play a game.  Then he got up to my room again and we couldn't remember how to play a "slow two person game" since I couldn't move fast enough to play Slap Jack etc. :)