One Year Ago Part 2

Before we knew it morning had come and we were ready to begin our day of bringing our baby into the world. My mom arrived to help in any way. My original plan was for it to be just Adam and I during the course of our labor but my mom wanted to come and some how I felt inside my heart that she should be there. They took the cervidal suppository out and the doc made it in to check my progress and well the cervidal did NOT work. It had done nothing and it was supposed to do what a body does on it's own in a 2 week period. Ugh! First failure in our labor process. The doc decided to go ahead and break my bag hoping to get things going that way. I felt fine. No real contractions thus far, keep in mind this was 7:30 in the morning. I was dilated to a 1 maybe 2 I can't quite remember. I was 75% effaced but had been that for a month. A few hours went by and was checked again-no progress. By 2 or so in the afternoon I was in full labor, heavy, painful contractions, my body was shaking. But...still no progress. My contractions were hurting so bad but my body was doing absolutely nothing. I was frustrated...so I hesitantly decided to take an epidural. Oh I did NOT want to. I wanted to be strong, take on labor all on my own with the help and support of my husband not drugs. I was so disappointed in myself but I thought, I hoped that the epidural would relax my body enough to do something with the contractions I was having and it's not like I was slowly progressing, I wasn't progressing at all. I was scared to death to have the epidural, scared of a shot going into my spine, I have never even had a shot in my mouth, I was certainly not ready to let a giant needle go right into my spine. I had heard so many horror stories about epidurals gone wrong. I didn't want that for me. But, as it came time for me to make that decision when I looked into the eyes of my husband who looked scared and in just as much pain as I was in I knew that accepting the epidural was the right thing to do. The anesthesiologist came in and the nurse was also there. Which by the way I had the very BEST nurses. The anesthesiologist was very gentle, he explained exactly what he was going to do before he did it. He asked me if I had questions and was very comforting. The nurse was very assuring. I sat up and as I leaned into the chest of my nurse, shaking and scared, the anesthesiologist gently placed that giant needle into my spine and within a moment it was over and I could lay right back onto the bed. It was not that bad, but I honestly think that if it had been anyone else holding me or administering the meds, it WOULD have been THAT bad because of the fact that they did such a great job putting me at ease. The epidural alone was not helping my body progress-more failure-so we decided that since I already had the epidural I would try pitocin. The pitocin kicked my contractions into high gear and the epidural was NOT working. I was hurting, big time. Through the course of my labor from the initial administration of the epidural until the following morning I had to have a redose 3 times! I thought, what's the point in having an epidural if it's not doing it's job. But, I guess I can say I felt it, which is what I wanted to do. Finally, after hours and hours of pain and an epidural that didn't work I was dilated to a 10 and ready to push. My doctor wanted me to try to get some rest before I started pushing so I rested for a while. Then it came time to push. The nurse was there but the doctor was not. You see, they wanted me to push to a certain point before the doctor came in. So I pushed and pushed. Nothing was happening. The nurse and Adam could see Lily's green head as they stood there each holding one of my legs but I could NOT push her out. At one point Adam finally had to have my mom take over and as he collapsed in the chair behind him the room turned white. After an hour and a half of pushing, Lily would still not budge! The nurse told me to stop and rest, she stepped out and came back. She told me that the baby's head was tilted and we needed her head to straighten out before I could push her out. So I changed positions. I got on my hands and knees and started rocking back and forth. I continued to do so for 10 minutes, I turned back over and nothing, Lily's head was still tilted. The nurse left again and came back with my doctor. He tried turning Lily's head with his hand. No such luck. He tried again, still no such luck. Here is where my memory gets a little foggy. I think the doctor left and then came back again. Anyway, he told us that I could continue to keep pushing if I wanted to but no good would come of it. He said that I needed to have a c-section. A What? A c-section. Oh failure, complete and utter failure. Everything about my labor failed. I just started crying in disbelief. The doctor explained it would be ok, that there would be 2 doctors. He said a lot of things but it really just sounded like a bunch of blah blah blah because all that kept going through my mind was failure and scare. A c-section, really? My mom cried too and I think Adam was just in shock. I was not ready to prepare for a c-section but I had 30 minutes to prepare. I was scared, more scared than I had been about anything in my life, more scared than I was when I was robbed at gun point working late at night at a local fast food restaurant and let me tell you I was scared for my life then.