Jasmine~

I apologize in advance – since this is a birth story, it isn’t going to be short.  I wanted to record it all though – and I always enjoy hearing birth stories, so maybe some of you will too.

I had my misgivings about inducing on Leap Day – mainly because I was only 39 weeks.  I had a feeling she would go late, just like my mom did with all of hers and just like Kaitlyn was.  Last time, my mom flew out and waited for a couple of weeks for a baby, and we ended up inducing at 41 weeks so I could take advantage of her being here.  So one of my concerns was that we would end up inducing eventually anyway, after wasting a lot of my mom’s visit (again).  Inducing right when she got here solved that.  And if you are going to induce, you might as well induce on a fun birthday, right?

After some reassurance from the midwife, I decided my plan was to go ahead with the induction but not have them break my water until we were sure it was really ticking.  By not crossing the point of no return, we could shut things off and go home if it was clear that Jasmine wasn’t ready to come out yet.  Not ideal, but the plan did make me feel better.  I was still going to listen to what my body and my baby wanted.

So the next morning we headed in bright and early.  On my birth plan, we specified that since I have a hard time with needles, we would love to have their best expert do my heplock.  The wonderful nurses were happy to bring her in.  But my veins decided they would not cooperate under any circumstances.  I have to pat myself on the back – I was calm and focused through the whole thing.  But it was horrendously painful to have her digging around for veins!  After three tries, she gave up and they brought in the anithesiologist.  That should have solved it, but even HE had to try twice.  I ended up getting it in my elbow, which the midwife said she had only seen on people coming in by ambulance because, while easier to find a vein, it is rather uncomfortable. UGH.

Meanwhile, it turns out that I actually had been having very mild contractions every 5 minutes or so before even coming in.  So we figured that once we turned the Pitocin on, things would just groove into place.  And they did – for a few hours.  Since my last births were 6 hours and then 5 hours, I assumed that we would have a baby by 3pm.  But at 3pm, labor had clearly stalled.  So it was decision time: break the water, or go home?

The deciding factor at that point was the awful heplock.  I was NOT going to go through that all over again another day.  Sorry, baby girl.  We broke the water before 4pm, and from 4-5 things were very, very strong.  So, just like my other births, we figured that since things were so strong, we could turn the Pitocin off.

And then labor stalled again.  We tried some other things for an hour or two, and I was still having some occasional contractions, but at that rate we would have been there for days.  I asked them to turn the Pit back on so we could have a baby before I ran out of energy.

And that was a rather frustrating part for me.  Especially because they had to gradually increase the Pit slowly, so it was like starting over.  And to have no end in sight at 9pm when I expected to have a baby at 3pm was frustrating.  I told the midwife I either needed a pep talk or a C-section just because I was so angry at the whole situation.  Usually I have a breakdown because I am tired, or because the labor is wearing me down, but this time I was calm and focused through every single contraction.  I just didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, and that made me want to chuck it all.

Luckily my midwife is great at pep talks.  And by 10pm, the contractions were as strong as ever and we were headed into transition.  The one bonus to all the stalling was that I had fit in a couple of light naps, so I had more energy than I gave myself credit for.

But we were still on Jasmines’s schedule, not ours.  Pushing took 30-45 minutes with my other kids – and once they crowned, they came out in 2 minutes flat. I learned not to actively push for the first 30 minutes because the urge to push came long before the baby was in the correct position to come out.  I ended up waiting an hour this time . . . and then gently easing her down for another half an hour . . . and then crowning for about 20 minutes.  My pushing contractions were still 5-10 minutes apart.

All of that added up to a baby born at 12:40 am, March 1st.

But I am really happy with how I handled it, in general. I was calm and breathing properly through almost every single contraction yesterday. That was one of my main goals – with Tyler, I was calm and focused until transition, at which point I panicked and had a very painful and awful end to his birth. With Kaitlyn I made it up to pushing and then panicked. This time around, I got really frustrated at 9pm, and when it came time to push I got a bit nervous about stepping into that phase, but I never actually lost it and went crazy like I did in my other births. And by listening to the baby’s schedule (no matter how much I didn’t like it), she was born smoothly with no tearing.

Sarah