Back to the story- I did one round of cytotexh and dilated 1 centimeter. The contractions weren’t terrible at this point, but then they started a second round of cytotexh. It started out ok. The nurse asked if I wanted something to help with the pain. She said it would take the edge off, but the downside was that it could cause nausea. The pain was bearable, and I didn’t want to deal with nausea, so I said no. Another big mistake. Shortly after she left, the contractions started getting bad. She had been coming in every half hour, but she said she would try to let me get some rest since everything was going smoothly. So of course, the one time I actually wanted her to come back, she didn’t for what felt like forever. And I was SO HUNGRY too. Nothing could be done about that though. The ice chips did not help.
As soon as she did come back, I immediately said I want the medicine! She started it for me, and that was the only time for the foreseeable future (weeks, months?:) ) that I would (sort of) sleep. My pain level went down a lot, and I drifted in and out of sleep. Until she had to do another exam. That exam showed I had progressed from 1-4 centimeters. The doctor said I was supposed to do 3 rounds of cytotexh, but the nurse said he wouldn’t want to a third round since it had worked so well on me.
She said we can go ahead and get the epidural started, then we’ll start pitocin, and you’ll have this baby in the morning. Whoa!
Ever since I learned how it happened, one of my very biggest fears in life was giving birth. Once pregnant, my biggest fear was not making it to the hospital (the hospital in Memphis was 30 minutes from our house in Southaven) or having something go wrong with the epidural.
Well sure enough, I tell the nurse something is wet on my shoulder, and it felt like the epidural was wearing off. She said that was basically impossible because all kinds of alarms would alert them if the epidural was disconnected. I basically had to make her look at my shoulder area, and she was shocked to see that the epidural had in fact fallen out.
The epidural person came and reconnected it, but from that moment on, the epidural did not work on my right side. It worked wonderfully on my left side, but the pain on my right side was intense and that is putting it lightly. The epidural person came in 3-4 more times to add more medicine. It wasn’t touching my right side.
My mom had given me a squishy snowman to squeeze during labor, and I was squeezing that thing to death. They started the pitocin around 5 am, and at 8:41 am on December 27, I texted the doctor to let him know I was dilated 10 centimeters. He said I would have that baby in the next 10 minutes or so.
He came in, and I was beyond relieved to see him. Once they told me I was 10 centimeters, I was scared he wouldn’t make it. I definitely did not need to worry about things progressing too quickly at that point though. When the doctor checked me, he confirmed I was dilated 10 centimeters, but he said the baby was still up high, and it would probably be another hour or so before we met him.
Wrong again. This baby was comfortable and not ready to come down. And the epidural was still not working on my right side. I was in all kinds of pain.
However, my water had broken over 24 hours earlier and I was 10 centimeters dilated, so they told me to start pushing. I should have said no thank you, I’ll wait until my epidural is inserted correctly. They strongly encouraged it, and I was so ready to have this baby in my arms at this point, so I went for it. Worst decision I made throughout the whole process.
A lady who is supposed to be very good at coaching women through pushing naturally was the lady who was attempting to coach me through this natural childbirth thing.
I was a teacher for 4 years. Teachers want their students to grasp the concepts they are trying to teach. My body could not grasp the concept this lady was trying to teach. The pain on my right side was so strong that I was making 0 progress.
After what felt like hours and dozens and dozens of pushes, I finally said this is not working. Please fix my epidural.
At this point, there had been a change in epidural people. Thank you Jesus. The lady came in and informed me that because my epidural had already been inserted twice, she was not supposed to do it a third time. And if it did not go in properly, I would have to go without an epidural at all. Serious warning, but I was more than willing to try it because the epidural basically wasn’t working at all anyway.
She told me I would still feel pressure but not pain if she inserted it correctly. This angel of a lady inserted it correctly, and I finally had some relief. After all the pushing I did when the epidural was not working, the baby had moved down, so there was definitely pressure. And still pain. It wasn’t working completely, but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it was before.
When it came time to push again, my body somehow knew exactly what it was supposed to do. I had heard that pushing without an epidural is easier because you can feel what you’re supposed to do. That was not the case for me. The pain was so intense that my body did not know what to do.
Once the epidural was working, I was truly so relieved that my body knew how to push. I never looked at the clock, so I honestly have no clue how many hours it took. But I do know it was a lot.
Anyway, I asked the nurse if the baby was close (multiple times). I was 10 centimeters for what felt like forever. I thought this baby was supposed to make his appearance shortly after that! She went from saying that he was still pretty high to saying that he would come down and then go back up. Absolutely not what I wanted to hear. We thought this baby was never going to come out!! He has been strong willed from the very beginning.
Finally, the doctor came in again to check me. I pushed with him in there, and then I heard the word vacuum. We learned about the vacuum in our class, but I honestly never thought I would have to hear my doctor say that word. However, when he did, I wasn’t concerned at all. I felt relief. It meant the end of labor was near. We were going to get to meet our baby boy very soon!
A few minutes later at 1:14 pm on December 27, Dr. Neblett delivered our 8 lb 10 oz, 20.25 inch long baby boy! After many, many hours of labor, they laid our screaming baby on top of me. He stopped screaming and looked up at me, and our whole worlds changed forever.
