Porter (P for short) was born on March 29th (unless you live on the East coast, then it was March 30th) at 40 weeks and 3 days. As a little background, I should mention that my pregnancy was horrible and not even slightly enjoyable. I was sick over half of the pregnancy--not "nausea," sick--and...I'm just not one of those people who enjoys being pregnant, I discovered. In addition to this, my mom had decided to come stay with us for 2 weeks so she could be around at the hospital for his birth and to help out a little while after.
At 37 weeks, I went in for a check and was making great progress! 37 weeks is technically full term and they don't do anything to stop labor at that point as they are satisfied with the maturity of the baby, and the progress made me really hopeful for maybe having a delivery a week or so early. Either way, it was generally established that I likely would not go passed my due date.
At 38 weeks, I went it for a check and was really excited to find out what kind of progress I had made. ...nothing.
At 39 weeks...nothing, same.
At 40 weeks and nothing, I begged for help. The doc did a quick membrane sweep, scheduled the induction I asked for, and sent me home.
The whole week I was really uncomfortable. Sore, exhausted, hard to move, everything felt very "on the verge," which was different from any other week. I firmly believe that if I hadn't gone in for the induction on the morning of the 29th, I would have gone into labor that day or the day after.
This was further confirmed when I was checked before the induction and had gained 2 more cm and full effacement.
At this point, I didn't go in with a "birth plan." My plan was simply this: keep your options open. I had never had a baby before, I had no idea what kind of pain I was or wasn't in for. I manage pain well on a normal basis--maybe I could take it, maybe I couldn't. But, I sure as hell wasn't going to keep myself from the meds to control it if I wanted them.
The pitocin started at 830ish, and I think in my mind I was pretty sure I'd make it to 6-7cm before I thought I would ask for anything. At about 4cm they broke my water. Up until this point, it was pretty easy and smooth sailing. After this, I got up and went to the AWESOME jacuzzi tub for awhile.
Where I couldn't use jets. And it was cold. And not useful at all.
So I went back to bed and asked for meds. They gave me the option of using an IV drug to take the edge off and I tried it--it did nothing for pain and just left me totally unable to focus on anything. So, epidural it was. By the time it came I was 5cm, so I felt okay being close-ish to 6. Epidural's, my friends? ARE AWESOME. At first, it really bothered me to not have control over the whole lower half of my body. But, it was much preferred to the labor pain. Within an hour I was 8cm, and didn't even noticed when I hit 10! The doc was home and on call so it took her maybe 25 minutes to get in, and it was show time!
After an hour and ten minutes of pushing (which was felt, epidural wore off) and twisting, because P decided last minute that he was going to change directions so he could stay in a little longer, this was born:
They put him on my chest for a moment, but he didn't cry right away and they were a little concerned about some possible meconium, so they took him to the warmer on the other side of the room and checked him out, weighed and measured, cleaning him up for me and brought him back when he was cleared as a perfectly healthy baby boy!
And we had a baby boy!
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