My birth story

My baby girl is 1 today, so thought I would re-post my birth story that I wrote a few days after Sophie was born...here it is!

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I had my last day of work on Friday, didn't feel any symptoms or signs that labor was pending. That night, I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up to change positions at midnight. When I did that, I felt this "gush"....I immediately said,"Jeremy! Something is happening!" I ran to the bathroom and there I continued to "gush", so I knew my water had broken. We called the hospital and they said to come in when contractions were every 3-5 minutes for an hour, or by 6 in the morning if contractions hadn't started yet. So Jeremy and I were busy getting last minute stuff together to go. I laid down for an hour, and by 2am, I was having contractions every 3-5 minutes, they felt more like menstrual cramps, not too bad. We left for the hospital at 3:15am, and by the time we got to the hospital, I was feeling the contractions more. At 4:30am, I started walking the hallways and by this point the contractions were really strong, but walking seemed to help a lot. After about an hour of this, it became too unbearable to walk so we went back to the room and tried to find different positions that worked. I tried the birth ball which I had really wanted to use but I felt worse with that. Finally, I found that sitting on the edge of the bed helped. The contractions kept intensifying in pain level, as well as time, I was having 45 second-1 minute contractions every minute and a half so there wasn't time to recover. At 5:30am, I was only dilated to 2 1/2 cm, but 90% effaced. The contractions kept coming and by 9am, when they checked me again, I was 4 cm, so I decided to get the epidural. As soon as I got the epidural, my contractions totally slowed down and were barely there. After about an hour, they decided to give me pitocin to increase my contractions again as they had pretty much stopped. The pitocin totally worked and according to the monitor, I was having contractions every minute (but b/c of the wonderful epidural, I didn't feel them!). However, they had a hard time getting a consistent reading of the baby's heart rate...it kept fluctuating. At one point, I had 3 or 4 other nurses rush in, b/c the heart beat couldn't be found...they immediately stopped the pitocin, gave me oxygen and switched positions and the heart beat was found again. They checked me at around 1pm and I was 6-7 cm dilated. At 3:30pm, the doctor came in (not my dr, but the on-call dr) and checked me and I was at 10cm so ready to push. It was so hard to feel when to push b/c I really couldn't feel anything still b/c of the contractions. However, during my pushing, the baby's heart rate started becoming very erratic and inconsistent. The dr checked me and said that, yes, the baby's head was down, but it was a bit on an angle so everytime I pushed, it would cause distress to the baby. After sometime, my baby's head was in the proper position, but still, every push caused the heart rate to go crazy, slow down, even stop. Once during a push, the heart beat monitor stopped beating and I immediately stopped pushing. The doctor said that we needed to get the baby out and he was ready with the vaccuum. He ended up doing an episiotomy b/c my baby was just not fitting and we needed to get the baby out. I had a 2nd degree episiotomy, and after that, the baby came out quickly and well. I heard my husband say, "IT"S A GIRL" (we did not find out before). My placenta came out a few minutes later. There were definitely some scary moments, but I'm so thankful for the incredible nurses and doctors, and my husband for his awesome support. I just look at little Sophie right now, and I'm amazed!