Explorer's Birth Story

Wednesday evening the 28th, my water broke, but hadnt really had contractions yet. A few in the morning, but they pretty much all stopped as soon as my water broke. I decided to stay home and try to get labor started since I had this happen with both Charger and Mini Cooper and I knew I didnt want to have pitocin or an epidural. With Charger, I didnt try to do anything and when straight to the hospital where they hooked me up to the pitocin right away. With Mini Cooper, I had stayed home, walked around, did a lot of stuff and got to the hospital in labor. With her I had no pit and no epi and I was happy.
So, Wed night I walked, used my birthing ball, took a bath, etc, etc....nothing. I only had contractions when I layed down. I tried all night. Thursday MIL was great and came to watch the kids so we could go to the hospital. We-DH, my mom and I-even stopped over at Walmart to buy a car seat to take Explorer home in (our old one was expired) and STILL no contractions.

Got to the hospital which was CRAZY busy. So busy that my first room was literally the size of a closet. Apparently they never even use the room and all the nurses were apologizing that I was in there and promising me another room as soon as possible. As expected, they hooked me up to the pitocin as my water had been broken for about 16 hours at that point. We all suspected it would just take a few hours and Explorer would be born, as the others had been pretty quick once I was at 5. I came in at 3, so we figured getting to 5 would just take a few hours and then it would be an hour or 2 passed that. HA, little did we know.

The pitocin drip was started somewhere around 2:15 and shortly after they moved me into a HUGE room. The nurses kept increasing the pitocin, but I was feeling hardly any contractions. They increased it by 2 for 12 hours until at 1 the next morning I was receiving 20 ml (per hour I think),the max dose they will give, and had not really felt ANY contractions. And I had no cervical change to speak of.

I was scared at that point that I was going to have a c-section because it had been 28/29 hours since my water had broken. I had a terrible melt down, knowing that the hospital has a no VBAC policy and I didnt want to worry about that then. The doctor decided to turn off the pitocin drip, leave it off for 2 hours and then start again. So, that's what they did. I got to take a hot shower and relax for about 2 hours.

When they hooked the pitocin back up, my hand immediatly started to burn like crazy. The nurse decided to take off that IV and start in another. I think that was a miracle that I really needed!

Once the IV was moved into the other arm, it only took a few minutes to start feeling the contractions. I progressed to 5 within an hour. The doctor wanted me to have the epidural since there was still the chance I might need to go for a c-section, but mostly because he thought it would relax me to dilate faster. I knew that could be the case, plus I hadnt had sleep in a LOOOOOOOONG time by that point and agreed to the epi. And being on my 2nd bag of Pitocin natural birth was waaay gone anyways.

Thankfully, by 7 AM-pretty much the 'cut off time' I was at a 7, and they were no longer talking c-section.

Explorer was FINALLY born at 9:23 am on Friday the 30th, 37 hours after my water broke, and after nearly 19 hours of attempted induction, but only 6 1/2 hours of active labor. I only pushed twice.  She weighed 6lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long, even though she was born at 36w 4d.  God has truly blessed us again!


We are loving our new little lady!  There are many fights over who gets to hold her and she is nursing well.  The jaundice is down to a safe level, so we are done with the Billi-blanket.  I'll blog more about that soon.  

God Bless you!