The labor story...

This could be a long post...

I had an appointment with my OB on my due date, Friday, November 20th. All of our plans of having an induction on that day or over the weekend were rapidly bashed: my cervix was still rigid as a plywood plank and an induction would mean at least 72 hours of labor. We just had to be patient and wait a bit more. The next plan was an induction the following Friday night...

Fast forward to Tuesday. I got a hunch something was coming when Moka the dog spent the entire day by my side, whining and looking strangely at me. I finally went to bed at midnight but never managed to fall asleep: I kept tossing and tossing. And then at 1:05am, I heard a strange pop and felt a gush of the weirdest liquid ever. I woke Bob up, we both took a quick shower, called the hospital and on our way we were!

Although there was no denial that my water broke, the nurses and on-call OB were dumbfounded by it: my cervix was still very, very hard... I was admitted and put on Pitocin at 2:45am. Within 15 minutes, I had stage 3 contractions every 2 minutes. Fast-forward to 1pm. I tried the bathtub: definitely not for me! After the longest 30 minutes ever, I had to get out. Just had to. When we got back to our room (I say our because Bob was co-sleeping with me and well, that particular new hospital only has private rooms... ) my amazing nurse had everything ready for an epidural. I didn't have to ask. She just knew it was time: I had been in full on labor for 12 hours and was still barely at 1cm.

The rest of the day and evening are kind of blurry. I know it involves a lot of pain and the epidural running off a couple of times.

I finally managed to get to 10cm after 26 hours of labor. I was still a -3, but the OB decided I should still try and push. After 3 hours of pushing, he realized the baby was rear-facing and that a skull fracture was eminent. I needed an emergency C-section. Of course, by that time I was totally out of it, just wanted the baby out and wanted nothing to do with a C-section...

It took a lot of focus on Bob's part to make me realize the urgency of it all and to make me realize that having a C-section didn't mean failure. It only meant, for us, having a healthy baby girl***

15 minutes later, little Miss M was born...



***Have I ever mentionned I love that men? He was a troupper during the entire labor adventure. That men running for ice chips, warm blankets, more gatorade? That was him. Also the greatest back rubber, focus coach and overall best partner I could have chosen...