My story.... it's really not that exciting...

Well, before I get started. I want to say that I had my prenatal care with the midwives at Seven Hills Women's Health Center in Anderson. I was extremely pleased. "Midwivery" has actually come a long way since "home births." It doesn't mean you have to go "natural" etc. Basically - the only thing midwives cannot do regarding a birth is a C-section. Anyway - there were 4 midwives and they were all great. Jody was my midwife on-call. She was awesome the whole day at the hospital. She would come in periodically and discuss the progress... options.... next step... suggestions. She was great! I would highly recommend a midwife!! :-)

Okay - so on Tuesday morning at 4 am... my water broke. Matt and I had a leisure time of loading up the car, calling Mom, calling Seven Hills, and eating a good breakfast. (Obviously- my contractions didn't start immediately.) We arrived at the hospital around 6 am. We had a dreadful nurse check us in... but thankfully she left at 7. (Phew!) All the nurses we had from then on - were really awesome!!

Now - let's see. There really isn't much to say for the day. By the time I got to the hospital - I could feel contractions - primarily in my back. We walked and walked. We did the breathing stuff. But, progress was slow. I definitely had a lot of back labor! The baby was not moving down to put pressure on the cervix - thus causing one to dilate. My midwife realized that only part of the bag had ruptured.... so she did finish rupturing the bag (with our permission). This should have helped the baby moved down into position. But, Emily was a little stubborn. (like her father? or her mother? hmm...)

Hospital gowns are so fashionable!!!!

At this point my contractions were pretty strong but also irregular. I would have two or three back to back and then ... wait 5/6 minutes until the next one.... then a couple pretty close again. So, I was definitely "working" through the labor at this point. I am not exactly sure of the order of events.... I started running a low grade fever. So, I was given antibiotics (gentamicin and clindamycin, I think.)

Finally - around 9 pm - I had pain medication... I think it was nubain. I was exhausted... and believe me.. it brought sweet relief. I slept for an hour, probably. Eventually, as a last resort I was started on pitocin. I think it was around 11 pm - I finally got an epidural. Matt says that I traded my coach in for the "happy box." (We had wanted to try to go an natural as possible...) He really was a great "coach" throughout my labor. Also - I had an internal monitor at some point to assess the contractions.

Unfortunately - I didn't respond well to the pitocin. My contractions continued to be irregular... ... they did get to two minutes apart... but some were still far apart... In the end - they couldn't increase it any more because they didn't want contractions any closer than 2 minutes. Matt says they had the pitocin up to 11. After all that I was about 5-6 cm dilated and 80% effaced. Also, the position of the baby was not correct... I can't remember exactly. So - around 4 am, we (the midwife, Matt, and I) decided that a c-section was necessary. Also - I think the reason that it was all prolonged ... was that the baby was totally fine the whole time. She was doing great through all of it. :-)

I guess that is my story in a nutshell.

Coming Soon.... a hospital disaster story.... It's true. Not funny at the time.... quite funny to me now. :-)