Well, this pregnancy wasn't at all like Isaac's and the labor & delivery certainly wasn't either. For those interested, here's the full story of Piper's birth...
Labor started about 6pm Monday, Sept 5 - Labor Day. Contractions were coming regularly about 4.5 minutes apart. I took a warm bath, thinking they might be more Braxton Hicks but it didn't help. By 9:30pm the contractions were getting stronger and were steady at 3.5 minutes apart. So, I told Ben it was time to load up and head to the hospital. After packing up the last few things we each needed for a hospital stay, we left home, thinking it wouldn't be long before we met our little girl. We were wrong.
We arrived at the hospital about 11pm, where I was taken to a room and checked for signs of labor. I was still at 1cm, and Piper was still very high, but my contractions were still steady and regular, so they decided to check me every 2 hours until my doctor came in the following morning.
When my doc came in about 8:15am Tuesday morning, I was still at only 1cm, so she decided it would be best to induce me that day. She started the Pitocin about 9am. Pitocin is supposed to help make the contractions stronger so that labor progresses faster. Unfortunately, it didn't work that way for me.
I will say that the epidural I received this time worked like a charm. My right leg had some feeling, enough to move it around as needed, but my left leg was completely numb. I mean it felt like a huge dead log that would not move no matter how much I willed it to. It was nice to feel no pain, however a little embarrassing to have to ask everyone in the room to help me move my leg each time I needed to roll over. :)
By 3pm, I was still only at 1-2cm, so the doc broke my water, thinking surely that would help move things along. Once again, it didn't do as planned.
By 2am Wednesday morning, Sept. 7, after 32 hours of labor, I was only at 4-5 cm, and Piper was starting to show signs of distress. So, my doctor said a C-Section was necessary. Although that is NOT the way I wanted things to go, it was in the best interest of me and Piper.
Ben posing in his surgical wear.
The surgery went fairly well. I had to have both horizontal and vertical incisions, which makes VBAC impossible for any future pregnancies. We also found out the reason Piper was so reluctant to come naturally. It was impossible. For the life of me I cannot remember the technical term for how her placenta developed, but essentially, her umbilical cord attached to the placenta, then made a huge web of blood vessels around it which is why she could not drop. The doctor said, after showing me what the placenta looked like, that if she had nicked one of those blood vessels when breaking my water, that we would have had to do an emergency C-Section the day before due to hemorrhaging.
So, while I don't remember large parts of Isaac's delivery, and his was very painful due to two failed epidurals and back labor, Piper's labor lasted 32 hours and ended in C-Section, but I remember every single second of it, and I wasn't in any pain.
