At my 37 week appointment Doctor checked me and I was 1 cm and 75% effaced. Got slightly hopeful that I might go early: it did not happen. My due date came and went on May 13th and I was still a 1 and 85% effaced.
Woke up at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 15th with contractions. They were uncomfortable enough that I could not fall back asleep so I timed contractions. They were consistently 3-5 mins apart. At about 6:30 a.m. I woke up Andrew and told him what was going on. I said we needed to go for a walk. We walked for about 2.5 hours then decided since there wasn't any change we would get ready and go to Stake Conference.
We sat at the back (in case we needed to leave). My contractions were still non-stop every 3-4 mins getting slightly painful. Next time, I would not go to Stake Conference in this state. I was so hot. I had to keep fanning myself and getting up to get a drink. Then I'd walk around because I was quite uncomfortable. How embarassing would it have been if my water broke with my whole Stake packed in there like sardines? Thankfully it didn't.
We spent the afternoon at home. The contractions getting slightly worse but still 3-4 mins apart. In the evening we packed my bag. We took it to the car and went to my mom's house for Sunday dinner.
After eating dinner we sat around with family watching my belly get tight and laughing about how I'd been 18 hours of non-stop contractions. I kept saying that I didn't feel like I should go to the hospital yet but then we would say....it's been a LONG time....what if all the sudden it just starts going really fast?? So at about 10 p.m. we took a vote and decided I should go to the hospital to get checked to get an idea where I was at.
We got to the hospital around 10:30 p.m on Sunday. I was fully effaced and at a 3. They hooked me up to a machine to monitor my contractions for a couple hours. Then left me. They were really busy. They came back in a couple hours later and the broken machine said I was not having any contractions. The nurse said, well obviously you are....but you are still a 3 so I am going to send you home.
At this point, we were disappointed to go home because I knew I would not get any sleep. I didn't get sleep the night before, how would I now? So I told the nurse my concern and she gave me an Ambien. She told me to take it right when climbing into bed and it should help me get some sleep. Boy was she wrong.
It was about 2 o' clock in the morning now and on the drive home we sent our moms a text saying they should go to bed. It looked like it was still gonna be a while. Then the funniest thing happened. Both moms sent us a reply text but they were both so tired that the texts did not make any sense. I regret that I didn't write down the messages. They were so awful that it kept us laughing until we got home, climbed in bed, and took the Ambien.
As soon as we got into bed my contractions got SO MUCH WORSE. Thus, I never had a chance to fall asleep. But that Ambien started to kick in and MAN do I halucinate on it. This pattern repeated every 3-4 minutes for the next 4 hours: contraction started, I'd spring out of bed and grab my crotch saying something like "man this hurts", then the halucination would hit and I'd start rambling on and on about purses, motorcyles, bugs attacking me etc etc. As soon as the contraction let off I'd say I needed to go to the bathroom and I'd sit on the toilet for a minute, wipe (whether I peed or not), wash my hands and get back into bed. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
By 6:30 a.m. Andrew had enough of my crazyness and took me to the hospital. I was a 6. They kept me. I got hooked up and pretty quick my anethesiologist came in and gave me an epideral and our moms showed up. It all seemed to happen so fast.
At 8:30 I was checked and at a 7. Doctor showed up and broke my water and there was a surprise in it....meconium! Doctor explained that this was pretty common for overdue ladies and it just meant we would have a few extra people there at delivery. Oh joy! Over the next few hours I progressed a cm per hour and even squoze in a tiny nap right around noonish when I found out I was a 10! At this point, they finally decided to give me pitocin which sounds weird but the reason being that my contractions were still 3 min apart. They said delivery would take forever if I had to wait that long between each contraction. So they fed me the meds while I waited an hour for the baby to "naturally" move down.
The erge to push got so strong that I didn't make it the whole hour of natural decent. Nurse said she would let me do a few pushes while Doctor was on his way. When Doctor got there I pushed for about a half hour and little Stella arrived. I had quite and audience when I delivered: Andrew, my mom, Andrew's mom, my doctor, my nurse, Stella's doctor, Stella's nurse, Stella's respitory theropist, and an observing paramedic. As soon as I had her the doors flung open and about 4 more nurses came in. It was quite a commotion and everyone left me to be with Stella. While Doctor was stitching me up I asked why I hadn't heard her cry and he said they were stopping her from crying while they removed any swalled meconium. She finally cried and despite the bit of drama she was given an Apgar Score of 7 the minute she was born and a 9 shortly after. She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz (which is exactly what both Andrew and I weighed at birth). She was 19.5 in long.
My epideral did not take a nice as I'd have liked. But the positive side of that was just a few minutes after having her I was up on my feet. I even felt good enough that I wanted to walk from my delivery room to my mom/baby room. But my nurse thought it best I be pushed in the wheelchair. Seriously, I was such a sickly pregnant woman that as soon as I had Stella I felt SOOOO much better. Recovery wasn't bad at all for me. But I did get a bit of the baby blues. I thank my mom and sister a lot for saving me from that saddness. They would hang out with me so I could keep my spirits up.
We had no other health complications in our hospital stay and we went home 2 days later. My CNA's and nurses said I was the easiest patient to take care of and that I didn't ask for enough. I didn't even know what to ask for. We thought it was funny though that over and over again different nurses and CNA's would say.... "Please, let me do SOMETHING for you." We had lots of visitors at the hospital which was really fun. Everyone commented on Stella's hair. She had so much hair and it was long. Our camera brooke during all the commotion right after delivery so I had to rely on my many spectators for photos.
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