meghan louise was born 7-28-10 after 42 hours of labor and an unplanned c section. this is where we left off:
i went to the dr on friday 7-23 for my 39th week check up/sono/non-stress test and meghan was measuring 8 pounds 14 ounces. dr. f decided we should be induced monday night at 6 pm if she still wasn't here on her own. i had been having very light sporadic contractions for the last couple of days but nothing that went anywhere. i really only noticed them during the nst because i could see them on the print out.
on monday 7-26, drew went to work (since he would be with me in the hospital for only a couple days we thought) with our only car, so his mom, kim, came out to drive me to my appointment at 3. drew's done with work at 430 so he was either going to meet us at home or at the hospital at 6. well, poor kim was waiting in the waiting room at the dr office because i was in there for 2 hours! dr. f had to call the hospital and tell them we'd be late.
so kim and i met drew at our apartment, we got all packed up for the hospital and met kim at burger king for my last meal before heading to the hospital. we got to the hospital at 7, only an hour late. we got checked in, settled and i changed into hospital gowns. they started with cervadil at 8pm, which is inserted vaginally, looks sort of like a tiny tampon on a string and you have to lay down while it's in, so they start it at night so you can sleep through it. cervadil starts ripening the cervix. due to being induced, they have to monitor the baby the whole time. well, i NEVER sleep on my back and if i tried to roll over onto my side, the monitor would lose the baby. sleep was inaccessible to me. i got a few snippets here and there and the nurse would let me sleep on my side for a half hour at a time but would eventually come in and wake me up to make me lay on my back again.
at midnight they inserted the first round of misoprostol which is a tiny pill inserted into the cervix to continue ripening the cervix. i was dosed again at 4am and 8am. dr. f came in and checked me, i was finally 100% effaced and we could start pitocin to get my contractions going. i begged to have breakfast because i hadn't eaten dinner since the night before. breakfast finally arrived at 10am and we started pitocin at 11am. that's when things finally got interesting.
contractions picked up and were coming every 3-5 minutes lasting maybe 30 seconds in length. this continued all day and night into the next morning. dr. b was now on call and allowed me to eat breakfast before we decided on our next move. i wanted to continue as contractions were every few minutes lasting 60 seconds or more. i was really feeling the pain and got some stadol to take off the edge. i'm firmly against epidurals being that our bodies were meant to deliver babies and i should be able to handle the pain! (haha, i needed that stadol like my life depended on it)
around 1pm dr. b came in to check me and i was still at 4 cm as i had been earlier that morning. dr. b suggested a c-section and i protested firmly because i wanted to keep going. i wanted to have my baby naturally. i wanted to go without drugs and feel every movement, work with my body and contractions to get meghan born. i didn't want her born into a drug induced stupor were she slept for days. i gave into his request that we do a c-section because he said someone was scheduled at 130pm so we need to do it now and i had just gotten a shot of stadol and i was literally falling asleep as he was asking us what we wanted to do.
i was so upset after i consented i was in tears in between falling asleep. i wanted so badly to bring meghan into the world in the most natural way and i had failed her. i felt like i had given up when i could've done more for her. i could've given her the best birth experience and i made the decision to put myself through seemingly unnecessary surgery and a drug drunk birth.
at the same time i feel like i was pushed into 'deciding' on a c-section. no one who was in the delivery room with me (dh, mil, my parents) even questioned me having a c-section despite me adamantly denying that i wanted one earlier during my labor. yet i can only blame myself for the decision. i still cry when i see a natural or vaginal birth on tv.
too make matters worse, now that i've had a c-section my chances of having to have another one are high and there are only 2 hospitals in my area that allow vbac (vaginal birth after cesarean) one is the hospital i gave birth at and the other is in a college city about 1 1/2 hours away from where we live now, a 1/2 hour from the small town our parents live in. so not easy to get there from our current home.
so we went in for a c-section at that time, dh got all suited up in scrubs and they wheeled me into surgery. i kept falling in and out of sleep and i was falling asleep as they tried to do an epidural. i was screaming from the pain of the shots to numb the area, i even swore at the anesthesiologist! the surgery itself only took about 20 minutes and dh was there throughout the whole thing. i could feel tugging and other sensations while they were pulling meg out but i couldn't see a thing.
meghan louise was born at 129pm on wednesday july 28th, weighing in at 7 lbs 8 oz!
