Saturday, August 14, 2010

I had Sophia!

I don’t know exactly when to say my labor started. I could honestly stretch it back to July 26th. That Monday I’d been feeling off all day and at my mother’s house we decided to check my blood pressure. It was ridiculously high so after making a call to the doctor we ended up in labor and delivery. My blood pressure went down but the monitor read I was contracting for 50 seconds every 3 minutes. So they had me stay over night but alas I ended up going back home because it was only early labor.

I continued to contract regularly for the rest of the week but it never progressed. Since I was regular my OB told me that I should come in when they began to get painful or change in the way they felt. Saturday July 31st my husband was at work so I decided to spend the day with my parents and my little sisters. Well my contractions started to get a little more painful so my mother and I decided to walk. First around noon we went to the mall and walked in circles. The contractions stayed but didn’t change. So we went home and around four we took my sisters for a walk around the neighborhood. This caused the contractions to pick up in intensity but it wasn’t really painful. We decided to get pizza before picking up my husband, after that I would decide if we should go for a cervix check.

At 6:30pm as my mom was backing out of the parking lot of the pizza place I felt this bubble sensation and then a huge gush. My water had broken all over my poor mother’s front seat. After a quick swing to my parents house to hand off my poor sisters to my father we went to the hospital. Luckily Sophia had good timing since my husband was due to get off work at 6:45.

Once at the hospital, my water still gushing and gushing, they told me I was still only 1 centimeter and 70% effaced. I honestly could have cried. By 8pm when my contractions still hadn’t picked up I was started on pitocin. The OB from my practice who was on call told me I needed to wait until 4 centimeters for a epidural. Around 9:30 they checked me again, I was a solid 2. By this point my contractions were full force and I hated it. Around 11 I had only made it to 3 but the OB was taking pity on me and decided if I relaxed I might progress. At 11:30 I got my sweet, sweet epidural. I slept on and off until about 3:30am when they did yet another check. I was 4cm and fully effaced. It was looking like I was finally making progress, apparently not quick enough because they put in the internal monitor to see how strong my contractions really were.

Around 5am I started throwing up, which really sucked. The nurses were exciting thinking I was transitioning, sadly I was still only 4cm. At around 7 Sophia started having decelerations that were helped by having me on my left side. 10am she started decelerating even though I was fully on my side. The OB did one more check at 10:45 and told me I was still 4cm. He told me I could wait a little longer if I wanted but he was suggesting a c-section at this point. I consented to the c-section because I was watching her decelerations as we spoke.

At 11:08am they wheeled me into the operating room and started. It didn’t take too long before the doctors told my husband to stand up. At 11:26am I felt on huge tug and suddenly I could hear this little gargled cry. It was amazing to hear and I immediately started crying with her.

Sophia was 7lbs 13.5oz, she was 20inches long and had APGARs of 9/9.

My recovery has gone surprisingly well, I was nervous about all the pain I was going to have but honestly it was no worse than when I had my gallbladder removed. We tried breast feeding but we needed to supplement by the 2nd. When my milk still hadn’t come in by the 5th, even with constant pumping, I made the decision to switch to just formula. I cried over the decision for a day but it is the best thing for us