I don't know if I will ever forget any of my labors...all pretty unique, some better than others....this one CRAZY!! So, started having contractions at 1:00 am Wednesday, could not sleep all night, they were between 5 and 10 minutes apart, so at about 7:00 dad came to take the kids to school and Rob and I headed to the hospital. By 9:00, they told me we would be staying and she would be born today, I was 3 cm and contractions were regular at 5 minutes apart. So, we were excited and started planning for Lane and Bo's arrrangements! I had told Dr. Mestemacher that I wanted to try not to have an epidural (because I did not have a great experience the first two times..Lane's had a bad "hotspot" so I felt everything on the right side of my body for a long time and with Bo, I was extremely nauseated and threw up for hours. Well, needless to say, I had an underappreciation for the epidural! I walked the halls all morning and I was still at 4 cm at 1:00, so she broke my water and started a very low dose of pitocin (which they try not to give if you are going "natural" because of the degree to which it intensifies contractions...and by about 3:00 I was at 5 cm but then haulted there ....Dr. Mestemacher came in at 5:30 and said basically she would give me another couple of hours and then we may be looking at a c-section, so she turned to pitocin up (to the max) and the contractions quickly became absolutely unbearable...I feel like I went to another planet for about 2 hours....I think I left my body and had like an out of body experience the pain was so bad and to top it off I was throwing up (obviously the epidural was not what caused the throwin up before)....Rob says he wished he would have video taped me and I wish he had, so I can remember how bad it was, because it is already starting to leave me! The pitocin had caused the contractions to come right on top of each other with like 30 seconds between....Dr.Mestemacher came in at about 6:45 and said the baby should be here in the next hour...I was between 8 and 9 cm, but I told them I couldn't take it anymore and they found the anesthesiologist savior.....when he got there about 10 min later, I then thought I couldn't sit still long enough to get it, but through my sweet nurses (April and Alicia) help, I did....Rob says "the tornado left the room" and life came back to normal.....I delivered her less than an hour after the epidural (so 18 hours without it and one hour with it). I think it should be illegal to give pitocin without an epidural! I pushed for about 8 minutes through 4 contractions and she was here...perfect, 6 pounds, 14 ounces (the same as her sister) and 20 1/4 inches long (the same as her brother) at 7:58 pm. I had no episiotomy or stitches! However, after it was over, Dr. Mestemacher had to do a partial DNC like procedure and she said if I had not gotten the epidural, she would have had to taken me to surgery....so thank you God for your intervention at the right time! I felt great after it was over! Apgar score of 8/9. I am sure everyone has their own personal labor story, and this is mine for Kate....unforgettable, but she is here all the same! There were several comments about that I looked good after the labor...if you would have gone through that and it was over....you would have been all smiles too!!!
