Henry's Birth Story...

Well, at 40+ weeks my OB scheduled me for a Non-Stress Test to check on the baby. I went in on May 14th to be monitored and everything was still going well. The baby's heart rate was still great and I learned that I had been having contractions, but never felt them. So, since things were still going well with the baby they sent me home with another appointment scheduled for Tuesday, May 18th. I left the appointment feeling hopeful that I wouldn't need that appointment because Baby W would come on his own before then, but as we all know it didn't happen that way.

The weekend was spent monitoring every pain and twinge, hoping that I was in the early stages of labor.

So, Tuesday arrives and I'm feeling great. All of the cramping that I had felt over the weekend had stopped, much to everyone's disappointment. At my last OB appointment my doctor discussed that if I had not delivered by week 41 that they would want to schedule an induction. I really wanted the baby to come on his own, but obviously that's not something I had much control over.

Tuesday afternoon John and I head to labor & delivery for my scheduled Non-Stress Test. Before we left I asked him if he thought we should take our hospital bags with us just in case they wanted to start the induction. We agreed that they would probably just send us home and have us come back the next morning or in a few days.

The non-stress test went well, meaning the baby was still doing great in the womb. The nurse left and came back with one of the residents. I don't remember much of what he said, mainly because he was from Lithuania (spelling?). He and the nurse left and returned moments later with one of my OB's. At the sight of him I knew that we weren't going anywhere until this baby was born.

My OB said some things along the lines of even though me and the baby are doing great still, we really need to get him out because the placenta is getting old. So, he ends with "If it's okay, we'd like to get you admitted and start the induction process?". At that point I wanted to tell him we needed some time to think about it, but realized that I didn't have much of a choice at this point. So, off we went to our room where we would spend the next 5 days.

The plan was to get me dilated to at least a 3 by 5 am the next morning by inserting a folly bulb catheter and then start pitocin at 5 am the next morning.

By Wednesday morning the folly bulb had done it's job and I was dilated to 4 centimeters. I was given a light breakfast of cereal, and then the pitocin began.

For the first few hours I wasn't in any kind of pain, probably because they started with a low dose of pitocin and gradually increased it every 1/2 hour or so. By 10:30 Wednesday morning, I received my first dose of pain medication. It really took the edge off for a few hours.

At 1:30 pm I needed the next pain medication. This is called the walking epidural. They insert it like the regular epidural, but it only last for a few hours. I immediately felt relief from the pain of the contractions that I had felt. The medication made me feel like there were feathers all over my body.

At this point I was still dilating, but slowly. By 6 in the evening I was still only dilated to 7 when I received the big epidural. The next few hours were spent sleeping some, talking to my family and being checked to see how dilated I was. Finally, by 9:30 I was completely dilated to 10! I tried a few pushes, but the baby was still too high, so we decided to wait a while and let the contractions do their job.

At 10:50 I started pushing for real...I had a 11:59 pm deadline that I was determined to get to. At 11:51 pm Henry was born!

I've heard from so many moms that you will soon forget the pain of delivery and be willing to do it again someday...to be honest, I thought they were all crazy. Now that I've been through this myself, I HAVE forgotten all about the pain and would most definitely give birth again. Henry is the most amazing gift I have ever received!