Let's talk about birth

LVila

I LOVED being pregnant. I had a little bit of a nausea in the beginning, nothing major, was really tired for the 1st tri, but I seriously loved it. It was amazing. 

As for the delivery... not so amazing. I'll just copy and paste my birth story.

I went to the doctorMonday, July 20 for an appt. I was 41w2d. Dr. B sent me for a Non-Stress Testand a Biophysical Profile. Everything with the baby looked fine. Dr. B decidedto have me come in Monday night for induction being that I had had nocontractions and was over a week overdue.

 

We got to the hospitalat 9p and got hooked up. Dr. B came in about 10:15p to insert the cytotech. At9a the next morning, I was at a -1 station and dilated to 2. We started pitocinat 11a. I started having mild contractions at about 11:35a. Dr. B checked me at2:45p and there had been no change despite having contractions every twominutes. The pitocin was upped every half hour until 6p, when Dr. B checkedagain. There had been no change and I was at the highest level of pitocin hewould give. At that point, he sent me home for the night to get a good nightssleep.

 

We came back to thehospital Wednesday, July 22 to try the process over again. At 8a on the 23^rd,I was between a 2 and a 3 with bloody show. The pitocin was started right awayand increased all morning. I had contractions every two minutes. At 1:30p, Dr.B came back. I was a ?tight 3,? so he broke my water to see if that would helpmove things along. I continued contracting all day at pretty much a constant 2 minutes.I had an internal monitor to check the strength of the contractions and theywere pretty hard.

 

Dr. B came in at 6pand I was still a 3 despite having contractions ALL day that should have madethings progress. He was very supportive through the entire process and neverpushed us to do anything we weren?t comfortable with. He told me that in hisopinion, I wasn?t going to deliver vaginally b/c the contractions I was having*should* have been producing some results. He had the on-call OB come in to talkto me at 8p. I was still a 3, so we decided to go forward with a c-section.

 

Everything movedpretty quickly at that point. The surgical team came in to talk to me, gave Chad scrubs andmoved me to the operating room. They attempted my spinal more than once? myback has a huge bruise and about 15 pin pricks. Sadly, after 30 minutes oftrying, the spinal never worked. My poor husband was sitting outside the ORwaiting the whole time. They decided to sedate me and let him come in for asecond, but then he had to leave again. Everything was finally ready and I wasput under.

 

I woke up briefly andheard her cry, but went back to sleep. They wheeled me back to my room and Chad got totell me it was a girl! He?d been with her for over 30 minutes at that point. Wegot to spend some time alone, decided on her name and then had our family comein. I?m not sure of all the details here as to times and how long I was in theOR, but she was born at 9:34p. She weighed 9lbs 10 oz and was 20 1/2? long.

I'm still pretty shook up by the whole thing. I never imagined that I wouldn't get to at least hear my baby's first cry or hear the doctor say, "It's a girl!" (we were Team Green- the only way to go, IMO hehe). I'm not sure when we'll have another. I honestly don't want to go through that delivery process again and would attempt a VBAC, but I also don't want the emotional roller coaster that a failed vaginal delivery brings on. I need to be ok with a c/s for the next one as an outcome. Plus, we had a horrible time breastfeeding and I ended up pumping for 11 1/2 months... not what I'd imagined, either, as I was REALLY excited to BF. As for now, I'm happy with my one healthy, beautiful, intelligent daughter and someday she'll have a sibling )