I’m so excited to finally share my birth story seven weeks later! Please excuse any typos.
My due date was July 18th and my scheduled induction date was July 25th. I tried all the natural induction methods, but what finally worked for me was eating jerk chicken tacos and collecting colostrum (or just a coincidence). The first time I collected colostrum my belly dropped the next day. This time 30 minutes later I was having contractions around 11:30pm on July 23rd.
I called my doctor and the midwife who was on call recommended for me to labor at home for a few hours and monitor my contractions. By 3:30 am the contractions continued and were five minutes apart and decided it was time to go to the hospital. I was experiencing shakes and shivers as well.
When I arrived at the hospital I wasn’t dilated at all. I was given an IV to help with dehydration. By 6 am if I wasn’t dilated, I was told I would be sent home. I couldn’t believe I would be sent home with contractions. By 6 am I was dilated about 3cm and by this point I was admitted. I stood up and realized my water partially broke on its own.
My birth plan was to have a vaginal, medicated birth. I was experiencing very painful contractions, so I opted for the epidural. Finally two hours later I received the epidural at 8am. Once I got my epidural I was a much nicer person. I was now 6cm dilated and thought I was progressing quickly but things started to slow down and I stayed at 6 cm for a few hours. This is when pitocin was offered. Originally in my birth plan I decided I did not want pitocin but in the heat of the moment I decided to go against my birth plan.
After the pitocin with every contraction my baby’s heart rate would drop. The doctors tried to reposition me several times to regulate her heartbeat, but nothing worked and we decided to have a C-section to get her out safely.
I rolled into the OR, with uncontrollable shakes. I tried sticking out my tongue to stop the shaking but nothing worked. I felt super drowsy fighting hard to stay awake. Minutes later our baby girl was born at 1:14pm.
She swallowed too much fluid and had a gurgly cry. The nurses informed me that she may have to stay in the NICU. But, I was confident
everything was fine. While I was in the recovery room, my husband was with our daughter for further testing and everything was perfect. We were in the recovery room for two hours before we were sent to our room. During recovery I was finally able to hold and feed my daughter. All the pain was worth it. We are obsessed and currently in our little newborn bubble. I’d do it all again, just one more time.
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