Isla’s Birth Story, pt. 1

We went in to be induced on Thursday the 15th at 6 PM. I was a week overdue with very little signs of progress in the past 4 weeks. 1 cm dilated, 50% effaced, baby at -3 station…sometimes. The plan was cervidil overnight to ripen my cervix, then start the pitocin 12 hours later to get labor started. While I knew it would probably be a long time for the induction to work, I figured that by the end of the day on Friday, we’d probably have a baby. Kellen and I were both really excited and not very nervous at all. I was just ready not to be pregnant anymore, and we were both ready to meet our little girl.

They started the cervidil Thursday night at around 8 PM. I got hooked up to all sorts of monitors, and they started an IV line (but not hooked up.) Everything looked good, and our first two L&D nurses encouraged us to get some sleep. We settled in to watch a few episodes of Farscape while we waited for bed time, and at about 10, the nurse brought in a sleeping pill. By 11, contractions had started, and by midnight, I realized I probably wasn’t going to be able to get any sleep due to the pain. (I also noticed when I went to the bathroom that the string on the cervidil was hanging out pretty far, but wasn’t sure how it was supposed to look, so figured it was fine.) I got a shot of demerol and phenergan and pretty promptly passed out.

At some point in the early morning, maybe at around 6, the nurse came in and said the baby was deceling when I was having contractions so she took out the cervidil and had me change positions and put on an oxygen mask. I was still drugged and the contractions weren’t that bad, so I went back to sleep. At around 8, I got up, was allowed to shower and order breakfast. My contractions had eased up, and I felt great and was ready to get the party started. They came in around 10 to check me and start the pitocin. Not much progress: 1.5-2 cm, 80% effaced, baby was still pretty high.

We went ahead and started the pitocin, though. I was feeling optimistic, and the plan was to do lots of walking and sitting on the exercise ball and try to get contractions started. By noon, though, contractions hadn’t really started back up, and I took a nap, thinking if I did go into labor, it was going to be a long evening and night. Woke up, still no contractions. Had some popsicles and really gnarly jello. No contractions. Watched Away We Go. Finally, around 5, I started having some small contractions. However, when they came in to check me at 7, I was still 1.5-2 cm, 80% effaced, baby was still pretty high. Even though I was having some contractions, albeit small, irregular ones, we decided that it would be best if I could get some sleep and start fresh in the morning, so they stopped the pit.

A doctor came in and did a quick ultrasound to verify that the baby was head down, since they couldn’t figure out why labor wasn’t starting. Isla was down, though, and as far as they could tell, there was no reason why labor shouldn’t have started other than that for her own mysterious reasons, Isla was happier on the inside.

At this point, I was incredibly swollen from the pitocin and saline drip. (There are pictures, which I won’t be sharing with anyone EVER.) I was disappointed that we were going to have to do this all over again and that I was still pregnant. Kellen needed some extra clothes, so we decided to break our no-visitors rule since nothing was really happening and asked our moms to bring clothes. We visited with them for about an hour, and then I got to take a shower (where I promptly started sobbing) and eat another real meal (which was the only good thing about having to start over.) When the L&D nurse (notably, our 4th one) came in to give me a sleeping pill, I was feeling incredibly low and unhappy with myself. I just couldn’t believe I’d have to go through another night and day of this.

Continued in part 2. * Will post tomorrow, for those of you reading on the 25th.