Liam's due date was June 16th and I was starting to think that I was going to be delivering well after this date. I had no real signs of labor starting anytime soon and figured I had some time. My plan was to finish up working on monday and tuesday and then have some time off to finish getting ready. Well, at least I made it to work on Saturday and Sunday! I woke up Monday morning with slight labor pains. I quickly realized that those 3 or 4 times I had woken up with a start throughout the night had in fact been contractions. (At the time, I just thought it was the baby pushing hard on my bladder). So I probably went into labor around 1am Monday the 13th. We usually leave for work around 6am and Mike and I decided around 5:45 that it probably wasn't a good idea for me to go into work. I was showered and dressed and ready and really contemplated it for a while... but decided that no one would want me at work and I'd be freaking everyone out. So Mike took Eli to his parents' house (our usual Monday morning routine) and headed to work while I stayed back. Contractions at this point were coming about every 12-20 minutes and lasting about 20-45 seconds. I decided to take the day to get things done that had been on my list of things to do for a loooong time.... so that those things wouldn't be nagging at my conscience when I got home with the baby. I took time to rest, even getting a 2 hour nap in despite the contractions. I was worried I was going to have to go to the hospital alone, but luckily that didn't happen, and as 4pm approached, I grabbed my packed hospital bags, took a final look around, and took the subway to my regularly scheduled doc appointment. I thankfully was able to walk fine and had no major contractions on the train (yay!) AND did not have my water break on the train (what a nightmare THAT would have been!). Mike met me at 5:30 outside the doc's office. When I got there, I told the secretary that I was in labor but thought I should go ahead and come to my appointment anyway. Lol..she was like - um, don't you want to go to the hospital? I told her the contractions weren't close enough yet and I was fine.
When Dr. Lee came into the room with his usual "How's it going?" I told him I had been having contractions all day. His response "Alright!!!" He checked to see if I was dilated, and sadly... I was only 2cm at that point. (When I checked into the hospital with Eli, I was already 4cm, so I was hoping for more). He checked the baby on the ultrasound and everything looked good, including the heartrate...so since the contractions were still 6 minutes apart at that point, he told me to go walk around for a while until the contractions got to be 5 min apart lasting a minute a piece, for at least an hour. I didn't want to go all the way home, so we walked down 8th avenue looking for a place to eat dinner. (I had asked the doc if it was ok for me to eat a full meal and he told me to go for it since they'd be cutting me off from food once I got to the hospital). We ended up walking to Vnyl, one of my favorite restaurants in that area. The waiters were super nice (and also did not know I was in labor!) and i decided to go all out.... I got a wrap, french fries, pickles AND a milkshake. It was all wonderful :)
During dinner, my contractions got to be consistently 3 min apart and were lasting for about a minute each. I had wanted to walk around for a while after dinner, but it soon became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do that. The contractions were still coming close together and I didn't want to get to the point where I COULDN'T walk to the hospital. So we headed over. We walked up to the labor triage room, filled out paperwork and then they took me back. I was checked in by the nurse and then one of the OB residents came in to get my history and check to see how dilated I was. At this point, I was hooked up to the monitors where they could keep constant track of both the baby's heartrate as well as my contractions. There were peaks every three minutes. I liked being able to see them on there cause Mike could see how strong they were. The resident who came to check the dilation couldn't feel how far I was dilated because my cervix was up too high for her short fingers. (Dr. Lee had also had a hard time, telling me the same thing...that my cervix was up really high). She said she'd have to get her "upper" to come check me out. So we waited...and waited...and waited. About an hour and a half later, the "upper" walked in and my heart sank. It was without a doubt the same doc who had checked me when I was admitted with Eli... the same doc who was so rough that I'm pretty sure SHE was the reason my placenta became abrupted. (It was when she checked me that I started bleeding profusely.... coincidence? I think not). Needless to say, I was pretty apprehensive about her checking me. She did, and it was rough, but thankfully I didn't start bleeding. They also did an ultrasound to confirm the baby was in the right position (he was). I was SURE that they were going to ruin the gender surprise at that point (wouldn't that be insane?) but they didn't. Whew.
They confirmed I would be admitted and then I just had to play the waiting game.... there were no labor rooms available, so I'd have to labor in there (on the SUPER uncomfortable stretcher!!!) until one became available. I was trying to go no epidural, so those next few hours were pretty rough. The nurse came in to put my IV line in (I had tested strep B positive so I needed to get antibiotics every four hours so that the baby wouldn't get sick during delivery) and toooootally blew the line. EXTREME pain. Ouch. She tried again and got it in, but my arm was still killing me from the first attempt. Just what you want when you're having extreme contractions, no?
FINALLY around midnight, a room became available and my nurse, Chrystel, came to get me and lead me to my room. It was room #31, and as long as I didn't end up needing a c-section, that is where I'd have the baby. The first hour, she took all of my information and I tried to stand up and do squats, etc. The contractions were SUPER SUPER strong and I found it even hard to stand. I wanted to sit, but the monitors would come off every time I tried to do that. So it was either standing or laying down. I knew I'd be laying down a lot, so I tried to stand as much as I could. Finally, at around 1:15 or so, I told her that I needed the epidural. The pain was wearing me down and I knew that since I had a long way to go, I needed to save some of that energy. I was very scared to get the epidural because of the poor experience I had with Eli's epidural (took three times to work and I almost passed out one of the tries!) but the anesthesiologist who came in assured me they would get it. It DID take a long time (felt like forever!) and during the administration of it, I questioned my decision about 100 times. I didn't feel like I had made the right choice at that time and was worried it wouldn't work. Finally, they got it in and all was instantly better. My legs got all tingly and the contraction pain went away. WOOHOO! Sadly, though, the contractions nearly came to a halt.. spacing out so I was having like one short one every 7 to 10 minutes. Booo. They didn't want to give me pitocin cause of the previous c-section, and I was fine with that. So they wanted to just wait to see what my body would do.
Here's the part where I got frustrated. From about 1:45 to 2:30, Mike and I snoozed. I found it hard to sleep cause i was really excited, but I did manage to get some rest. Then I started to get impatient. I felt like everyone was just sleeping (my nurse went on a two hour break... and I never even saw the doc on call) and no one was doing anything to help my labor progress. I asked numerous times if I should be changing positions, but they all said no. So I just waited... and waited.... til about 4:30. No changes, other than my frustration getting worse. Around 4:30, the contractions started to pick up a bit and I started to have hope again. We just kept truckin along.
My doc arrived at 8:30 am and checked to see my dilation. Between 2-3 cm. BOO - SERIOUSLY????? All that for NOTHING? The good news is that I was 100% effaced, though, and they assured me that was a significant enough improvement (I had been 80% effaced) to keep going. Fine. Onward ho. I had spoken to my mom already and she had left to come up to join us - yay! I'm pretty sure now was also the time when he decided to break my water, though that might have been later.
Contractions really started to pick up and I was getting hopeful. Every two hours or so, Dr. Lee would come back and check me and I'd be ONE cm further than the time before. It was a frustratingly slow process.
Around 3pm or so, I started to get an extreme pain in my left hip. The pain was constant but would intensify greatly when I had a contraction. It got so bad that I was crying and just couldn't get comfortable at all. It was horrible. My doc came in and called in the head anesthesiologist. They were both concerned that my uterus could be rupturing (the main worry when you have a VBAC) and were considering a c-section right then. They gave me 2 choices. C-section or repeat the epidural. i wanted neither, but the lesser of the two evils was to repeat the epidural. The guy doing it was THE guy, and sure enough, he got it in in about 4 minutes. Yay. The hip pain, thankfully, went away immediately. Whew.
It was becoming clear that my doctor was not going to be the one delivering this baby, cause he was going off duty at 5:30. Boo. He checked me right before he left and I remember telling him... if you tell me that I'm still at 6 cm, I'm going to lose my mind. The good news: I was at 9cm! WOOHOOOOO! This was the best news I had heard all day!!!!!! Hope again!!!! But there was still an anterior lip on my cervix and we had to wait for that to go away or else when I pushed, it would just get swollen and the baby would not be able to pass. Further waiting...and waiting.
And this is where I'll end part one cause I need to get some sleep!
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