I woke up on Thursday, August 8, 2013 feeling like I was coming down with a cold – just what I needed at 39w2d pregnant. I ended up sleeping all afternoon in the hopes of making it go away. (I have a really flexible work schedule, so I can usually get away with that kind of thing.) I did feel somewhat better, but ended up being awake all night as a result. At 7:30am Friday, I got up off the couch to do one last thing before heading to bed for a while. Two steps later I felt a trickle of water and thought “oh great, I make it this far in pregnancy and now I pee myself”. Then it kept coming. And coming. And coming. At this point I realized that I was now a movie cliché and that my water had broken without any prior signs of labor. I yelled for my husband to wake up and come help because I didn’t want to track amniotic fluid all over the house. Poor man, having to wake up to that. :)

By the time I called the doula, called the OB’s office, and got to L&D, it was 10:30am. I couldn’t really wait for labor to start on its own because I was GBS positive, so I knew I needed antibiotics before too long. Unfortunately, my water may have broken, but my body wasn’t ready for labor, so we started with cytotec. (The hospital I was at doesn’t use cervidil at all, so it wasn’t an option.) Four or five hours later, dose #2 went in. When the doctor came in to talk to me after that, I asked to wait until morning before trying anything else because I wanted to see what the cytotec would do. I was having moderate contractions at this point, but they weren’t getting stronger or close enough together to cause cervical change. I was using Hypnobabies as my primary form of pain control and was doing all right with it so far.

Saturday morning rolls around and still minor change, so we tried a third dose of cytotec, followed by a fourth. I had a bad feeling about that many doses, but I didn’t really know what else to do. It turns out I was right. The baby’s heartrate had a prolonged dip about 45 minutes into dose #4, leading to a terrifying several minutes while they fished out the cytotec and stabilized things. (Note to any medical professionals reading this: if you’re going to rush in and tell a woman in labor you need her to take her pants off NOW, please tell her why and don’t just start pulling off her pants for her. Thank you.)

I still wasn’t really dilated enough for them to recommend Pitocin, so we tried the foley bulb at that point. It was in from Saturday night until Sunday morning, but didn’t really do much except make contractions really suck. By this point, my water had been broken for 48 hours, I still wasn’t in active labor, and I was running out of options, so Pitocin it was. I still had no interest in an epidural, but knew that Pitocin can be a pretty rough drug so I requested nitrous oxide at that point. I love that my hospital offers it because it’s short-acting, you can use it only when you need it as you need it, and it doesn’t affect the baby. Plus nitrous is a very pleasant high. :)

I may not have been responsive to other forms of induction, but whoa nelly do I respond to Pitocin. By the time I hit 8 units (they start at 2 and go up to a possible 20), the contractions were double- and triple-peaking, so it was blessedly turned back down. I labored throughout Sunday making good change, was declared in active labor early that evening (which is a joke, because it felt no different than the prior hours on Pitocin), and started feeling pushy late in the evening – maybe 10pm? Time was weird by that point. I love it when they declare you officially ready to push, given that I was to the point where I couldn’t not push. The baby was descending and they said my pushing was effective, but due to a congenital issue, I have a very narrow and tight vaginal opening that wasn’t stretching or giving way. The doctor recommended cutting an episiotomy and using forceps at this point. I knew the episiotomy was a distinct possibility going into labor, and I okayed the forceps because I was so exhausted that I just wanted the baby out.

Finally, at 12:47am on August 12, after 65 hours of labor (counting from the time my water broke), Rhys Christopher came into the world. 

 

tl;dr; Had an epically long labor. Managed to avoid an unwanted c-section. Have a son.