Birth story

I've been meaning to write this for a few days now and really want to get it all down before I forget too many details, so here's the birth story for Lauren (yes, we've decided on the name!)

I was scheduled to be induced Monday Aug.1 and called the hospital at 7am to make sure they were able to do the induction. They said yes and asked if I could be there for 8am. I was a little surprised at how quickly things were moving but said of course! I had a quick shower and breakfast and we left for the hospital. They started with a 20 minute non-stress test and after that the OB on call arrived, examined me and put in the cevidil. He said I was already 2cm dilated and that it was likely this would start labour. If not I'd go back the next morning for pitocin. I stayed hooked up to the monitor for another hour as they wanted to make sure the baby's heart rate was ok as the cervidil causes minor contractions right away and some babies react badly to this. We were sent home an hour later.

Dan and I spent most of the day out in the garden. Dan cut down branches from a tree and I took them and moved it into a pile to be taken to the yard waste centre. I started getting contractions around 1pm but they were pretty much 5 minutes apart. I always thought labour was a gradual process and that contractions started at 10 minutes apart and slowly got closer together and more painful so these confused me and I was worried I was in false labour again. Slowly the pains got more intense though. Dan's mum and aunt cooked us dinner and we sat down at 7:30 to eat. The contractions were now every 3 minutes and I had to stop what I was doing to breathe through them. It was at this point that we decided to head to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital I was examined and told that I was only 3-4 cm dilated which is the point where they keep you in if you want. They phoned the OB and he was happy either way. I said I wanted to go home but I was worried as they contractions were close together and I didn't know at what point I should come back. The nurse suggested we walk around the hospital for an hour or 2 and come back to get examined again because I may be progressing quickly and that's why they're close together, so at 8:50 we started walking around the parking lot. My mum and sister went to get tim horton's and Dan, his mum and myself walked around in circles. At 9:15 I had a contraction and felt liquid come. I told Dan and his mum I think my waters broke so we made our way back up to the ward. They took me into a room right away and the nurse came into the bathroom with me to get changed. When I took off my clothes we realized it wasn't my waters, I was bleeding. I started to panic as it wasn't a little bit of blood and more came with each contraction. Then they asked me if I'd felt the baby move recently and I started crying saying I'd been focusing so much on the contractions I hadn't been paying attention to movement. They laid me on the bed and put the fetal heart rate monitor on. The whole time I was just crying saying "I can't lose another one" over and over. It was such a great sound to hear her heart beating away. They phoned the OB who said that they'd have to monitor the heart rate from this point onward and as long as the bleeding didn't get worse then it was ok. Apparently they only check the heart rate every hour in a normal labour. The contractions kept getting worse and worse and eventually I was given gas to help with the pain. I was glad that Dan and my mum both stayed at the hospital as they took turns sleeping and supporting me. I was a little annoyed with Daniel a few times as he'd start to nod off while I was having a contraction! At 4am I was given something through an IV to help take the edge off the contractions. When I first came to the hospital they asked about pain control and I said that I was open to options but I wanted to be able to feel the delivery, so no epidural. Whatever they gave me through the IV slowed down my contractions and they started getting further apart. At 7am they phoned the OB on call to come in to break my waters as they expected this to speed up my labour. The OB was going to do rounds and would come at 8am to break them. 7:45 they broke on their own during a contraction. The nurses were right. As soon as my waters broke I started the transition phase. The pains got really intense and the gas was useless at this point. I actually started begging them to make it stop, which I never thought I'd be that women :( The OB came in at 8:30, examined me and told the nurses I could start pushing. This was by far much easier then the transition phase and I was actually really relieved to be pushing through each contraction. I remember thinking as I'm pushing "this parts easy!" Lauren was born 1hr 43 minutes after I started pushing at 10:12 am. I had a second degree tare which is quite painful at the moment!