Here She IS!

Well, it didn't exactly happen as I imagined, but here she is!

Thursday I went back to work, taught all day - left at 3:10 for the dr. Got to the dr, they realized my blood pressure was high and sent me over to the hospital to check in for the long haul. I was supposed to be 'ripened' overnight and then induced Friday morning.

When I got checked in and finally up to a room (about 5:30pm) they hooked me up to monitors for the baby and for contractions and then to an IV. One of the nurses came in and said "so, are you having contractions?" I ssaid I thought I was having a few braxton hicks, like normal. She asked how often I thought I was having them. Seemed like 5-10 minutes to me - sometimes longer. She said "well, they're kinda close together - as often as 1.5-2 min apart" Whoops. She told me that they couldn't put the medicine in to 'soften' my cervix if I was having contractions that close. They checked and I was still only 1 cm dilated, and my dr was worried about inducing without me being a little more open. Kinda seemed like I was in a bind. After a few hours of fluids, they decided that my contractions were regular enough (though still only about 2 min apart) to put the ripener in. So that happened about 8:30pm. I went about an hour or so, maybe less and really started to feel my contractions. And so close together! I was standing, sitting on my ball, rocking - and Nathan had to be RIGHT THERE because it was a bit painful. The nurses didn't seem too concerned, saying I likely wasn't any more dilated and that they were waiting till morning to induce. I finally said to Nathan "I don't think I can do this all night - these HURT" So I 'caved' and got an epideral around midnight.

It was super easy, really didn't hurt at all - the worst part was going through a few contractions without Nathan - since he had to leave the room. However, I will say that my L&D nurse could not have been better! I love her and she's amazing and she helped me through them.

So now that I was a bit drugged up (I still felt contractions just apparently as a pressure sensation not as contractions - whatever, they still kinda hurt and got progressively worse) they decided to check for dilation again. Great news! I was at 5cm! So I got to tell Nathan when he came back in that we'd probably have her early morning :-)

The next 2 hours went as planned - 1 cm each hour. Then I quickly started feeling lots more pain. And I really thought I needed to push. I told my nurse and she kinda said "well, I can check again, but you probably have a little more time"

So she checked - 9.5 cm! She left to call the dr and came back in and told me my dr usually took about 30 minutes to get here so I needed to hold off on pushing till then. Because my water bag hadn't broke and they needed the dr to do that. So I'm really feeling some pain and holding on to the bed rail every 2 minutes to get through without pushing. She kept telling me it was very soon and that it would feel great to push and I just had a few more minutes. The seemingly longest part of labor was those 30 minutes. Then my dr called and said she was almost there, if I was ready, I could start to push. However, my water hadn't broke. So I rolled over on my back, went through one contraction and ta-da - gush of water! I think I had about 1-2 pushing contractions before my doctor came in. She looked and went through 1-2 with me then left the room and said "call me when she gets closer" So my amazing L&D nurse, Desiree and Nathan got me most of the way, called my dr in and after 50 minutes of pushing, Samantha Hazel arrived!

I'll post more later, but she is a little unhappy right now and I'm done.