Labor Story : Part 2

Now where was I? We left off the labor story at being confined to the bed at around 12pm. So, another two or so hours go by and I'm still contracting, they are starting to feel "real" but still are not measuring high enough to dilate the cervix. Also, I was having some piggy back contractions so they couldn't up my dose of pitocin (hospital policy I think). I guess you can't have more than 6 contractions in a period of 10 minutes because then it could put the baby in to stress (some statistic they came up with). So, at this point I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that this is not going well and I most likely will have to have a C-section. AND at that point I would have been disappointed, but would have welcomed any means to get the baby out of me! lol However, the doctor (the woman from our practice who I'm not fond of) came back in, checked me, saw that I hadn't dilated any more yet and told the nurse to go against protocol and up my pitocin. SO, hidden blessing was that even though I did NOT enjoy this woman at all personality wise, she made a decision to go against protocol which ended up working and saved me from having a C-section. Crucial decision for my labor story and I am so glad that she went against statistics and so thankful that she was gutsy enough to put her head on the chopping block to ensure my labor went well. She and I still bump heads, but MAJOR props to her recognizing something needed to change and making the decision! So, after that labor started to finally pick up. I slowly started to dilate to 3-4cm, then contractions started to get pretty intense around 5:30pm and I started to consider the epidural. They checked me at around 6pm (I think) and I was 5-6cm but the baby was still at -2 station. The pain of the contractions were now pretty intense, and what made the pain worse was that I could feel the internal monitor with every contraction. It was like double the pain. Ugh. So, by 6pm I was exhausted and felt like I had dilated enough that labor wouldn't stall out and asked the nurse for the epidural. I was bummed to be asking for it, I knew that if I hadn't been on the pitocin or been so exhausted from the long labor I probably wouldn't be needing it, but I SO needed some relief. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have had the strength to push out Sarah if I hadn't gotten some relief.

Oh dear, I am needed again to feed so I will post the final part of my story later on, hopefully tonight to wrap this up. Sorry this may be long and boring to some, but I'm finding it very therapeutic. lol