I was one week overdue and ready to have little Gavin! I went to the hospital at 8:00pm January 15th with plans to have cervadil inserted, stay overnight and start the pitocin in the morning. Well, as it turns out I did not ever need pitocin. The cervadil was inserted around 9:30pm and my contractions started right away. I felt the contractions completely in my lower back and was having them every minute, sometimes lasting two minutes. I remember calling my sister and telling her I felt like I was having tons of contractions, but wasn't completely sure. They did not hurt as bad as I expected, but I ended up getting an epidural anyway.
Around 11:30pm we were just getting settled in and Brinton was starting to fall asleep. Then, I felt a huge gush and thought my water broke. So I looked down to see what it was and I saw blood gushing out of me. I frantically told Brinton to call the nurses right away. I thought for sure my placenta was abrupting since it had been low lying during the pregnancy. About five nurses rushed in and assured me the doctor was coming. Just in case I needed an emergency C-section, the nurses cut off my gown so they could get to my bra and take it off and they made me take off all my jewelry and contacts. The nurse would not give me a mirror so I could see to remove my contacts so she kept sticking her own (ungloved) finger in my eye and tried to take it out. That really pissed Brinton and I off. I did not have any glasses so I could not really see much for the rest of my labor.
The on call doctor came strutting in a few minutes later. She examined me and determined that the bleeding was slowing down. She said I was already 5cm dilated and even though she didn't know why I was bleeding she said it was nothing to worry about at the moment. She thought maybe the fast labor caused my cervix to bleed. I was nervous, but I tried to trust her. Since I was already 5 cm and progressing so fast, Brinton called my sister, mom and his mom and told them to come to the hospital. About 10 minutes later, I started bleeding more and once again, the nurses and doctor rushed in. She did another pelvic exam and the bleeding started to slow down. At this point, I was convinced I was going to bleed to death. I told the doctor I didn't feel all this bleeding was normal since no one I knew ever bled like that during labor. Her response was, "Oh you watch too much baby story" and "I can do a c-section if you want me to, but you will just lose more blood." She said it very sarcastically. Needless to say, she was not the doctor I wanted to be there when Gavin actually made an appearance.
After things calmed down and the bleeding stopped, I got my epidural. It was quite painless, just a little prick in my back and some tingling down my leg. Unfortunately the epidural only worked well on one side of my body and I could feel the back labor on my left side. It also made me shiver really bad for hours. It wore off after a few hours and I ended up eventually getting another dose before I started pushing.
After my epidural was in and I was re-situated the nurse came in and took my vitals. I had a temperature of 102 so they put me on antibiotics right away and gave me tylenol. Then "Dr. Sarcastic" came in and broke my water. I did not feel anything when she did it (thanks to my epidural).She said only a little water came out...perhaps it had already broke when I was gushing blood? Anyway, my labor seemed to slow down from that point. I don't remember a whole lot after that except that my family had arrived. My sister was in the room us almost the entire time and my MIL and mom switched off.
By 5:30am I got this urge to go "number two." Well, I had heard if you felt like you had to poop then it meant you were ready to push so I remembering tell everyone in the room that I felt like I was pooping on the table and I thought the nurse should come in. Sure enough, they checked me and I was complete. Unfortunately, I really WAS pooping and everyone there got to see it (part of the joy of back labor). I started pushing around 6am and at first it was going well, but that did not last. I PUSHED AND PUSHED for 2 1/2 hours and Gavin wouldn't come out. I remember one of the rude nurses saying I wasn't doing a good job pushing. Thanks for the support!! It was really hard to push effectively since I could not feel or move my legs. In the middle of pushing there was a change of shift for the nurses and they left us alone for WAY too long. It was rather annoying! So, I tried pushing without a nurse there.
By 8:30am we had all determined I was not going to get this baby out without assistance. So, a new doctor came in and performed an episiotomy and used the vacuum extractor. It took two tries with the vacuum and two cuts before Gavin was finally out. He cried right away and scored 9 out of 9 on the apgars. Unfortunately, he ended up having a fever also and had to go to the NICU to be put on antibiotics for 48 hours. Of course, I immediately started bleeding AGAIN right after the placenta was delivered and I had to get my uterus stuffed with gauze, a shot in my leg to clot the blood, and pitocin to make my uterus contract more. By the time it was all done, I had lost a lot of blood and had to gets TONS of stitches. But in the end, it was completely worth it and I can't wait to do it again someday!!
