Labor

After my doctor appointment on 10/4, I came home and was pretty freaked out about getting induced the following day at 5:00pm.  I spent the night wondering if I had made the right decision and contemplated calling and changing my appointment to Friday, but after discussing it with Greg, we decided to keep it.  I didn't do much that night and anticipated sleeping in a little on Wednesday because I knew that I would probably be in labor all night 10/5 - 10/6 if they weren't going to induce me until 5:00pm.  I figured that I would have the afternoon to get everything ready for the hospital and take a shower.

I went to bed around midnight and woke up at 3:00am to go to the bathroom and had a no doubt about it contraction.  I couldn't believe it.  Since it was the first one, I had no idea what to expect, so I went back to bed and tried to sleep.  I was waking up to a contraction every 10 minutes or so, so at 4:00am I decided to wake up Greg so that he could help me start timing them.  The contractions were pretty painful and getting progressively worse.  By 4:30ish, they were between 5-8 minutes apart and I was couldn't believe that they were already coming so close together.

I had been given the 5-1-1 rule (1 minute contractions, 5 minutes apart for 1 hour) before I was supposed to call my doctor, and I had assumed that the first stage of labor would take several hours, so I figured I would have plenty of time to take a shower, get ready and maybe even put some make-up on before calling my doctor, so a little before 5am I got in the shower.  I took Greg's stop watch into the shower with me and I barely made it through the shower.  My contractions were coming 3 minutes apart and they had me keeling over every time, so halfway through, I called my mom to give a heads up because I knew she had to go and pick up my grandma.  When I got out, my contractions were still coming 3 minutes apart and I could barely get dressed, let alone dry my hair, so I called the doctor and she told me to come in right away.  Meanwhile, Greg finished packing my bag up with all my toiletries.

We left for the hospital a little before 6am and once we got the hospital, they took me to the triage room to be evaluated.  I was still only 3 cm dilated, but my contractions were coming every 2-3 minutes and they were horrific.  I expected them to be bad - but I don't think I could have imagined how awful they would be.  They sent me straight to the delivery room where I would stay until I gave birth and put me on Pitocin to get me to dilate.

I got my epidural around 8am and I don't think I would have made it one more minute without it.  With my contractions so close together for so long, I wasn't getting hardly any time to recover from the last one before the next one would start.  It was truly awful.  But once I got the epidural, everything was going great for a while.  They broke my water and said they would be back to check on me in a couple hours.  By 11am I had already dilated to 9.5cm, but shortly after, I started shaking uncontrollably and it lasted up until right before I started pushing.  They said that it was common for women to shake during labor, but then they started noticing some changes on the monitors and they took my temperature.  I was running a fever and was feeling really awful.

Right around 2pm, they decided it was time for me to start pushing.  Let me just say - this part was absolutely nothing like I had imagined (and I'm pretty sure Greg would agree).  There were a total of 3 people in the room - me, Greg and my nurse.  My nurse had one leg and Greg had the other leg while I pushed.  Greg and I had talked about what he would do and whether he would want to see anything and I don't think he had really planned to have a front row seat for the entire birth.  Anyway, after about 20 minutes of pushing, he was crowning and my nurse couldn't believe it.  She was frantically calling the other nurses and the doctor to get in the room and my doctor wasn't even available yet.  I just waited for everyone to get dressed and ready and my doctor finally arrived right as I was getting ready to start pushing again.  A few minutes later, Graden was born and my doctor wasn't even dressed yet.  He was born at 2:35pm and was 7 lbs 8 oz and 20 inches. After he was born, I had to be stitched up because I tore giving birth.

Because I had a fever during labor, they had to closely monitor Graden and he was born with a slight temperature.  We were both put on antibiotics as a precaution - although I swear that my fever was because my OB had me get a flu shot (my first flu shot ever) less than 24 hours before I gave birth.  Neither me or Grady had a temperature the whole rest of our hospital stay.  He didn't have any other health issues and we got to take our precious baby home on Friday (10/7) night.  I am so in love.