Sarah & Christopher~ 3

With my third Hypnobaby, I am simultaneously proud of never losing focus . . . and disappointed in myself for being a people pleaser instead of listening to my own intuition.  I was due March 7th, and told everyone from the day I calculated the date that I wanted a Pi Day baby.  (That’s 3/14 for people who aren’t hopeless math nerds like me.)   Really though, my main goal was to go into labor naturally for once, since I had never had contractions before Pitocin.  And then my mother scheduled her flight for the 1st – 14th, despite what I told her.  And then my husband noticed that we would hit 39 weeks on Leap Day and decided that would be the coolest birthday ever.  And since I wanted to make everyone happy, I said we would induce on Leap Day instead of waiting.  But in my head, I knew this girl would have gone at least a week over my date if I let her.  I consoled myself by saying that if we went in and Pitocin didn’t kick the labor right into gear, we would take that as a sign that it wasn’t time to have a baby yet and we would just go home.

One of the notes on my birth plan was that I am terrified of needles, and so I needed the best expert they could find to put in my Heplock.  The nurses were fantastic, and proudly brought me an older nurse who was the best on the floor.  And she gouged me twice in one wrist and once in my elbow before giving up.  I was proud of myself for staying calm and focused, but DANG that hurt!  Even the anesthesiologist had to try twice, and eventually put it in my elbow.  That was a long, painful hour for me.

The Pitocin kicked in, and labor went well . . . for an hour or two.  And then it slowly stalled, just as I expected.  We were faced with the decision to either break my water or go home.  But no matter how much I had thought we would go home at that point, I just wasn’t willing to go through that heplock placement again.  Sorry baby, time to come out.  When my water broke, labor kicked right in, so we waited an hour and Claudia okayed taking the Pitocin off.  We had done that with my other two births just fine . . . but this time, as soon as the Pitocin came off, labor stalled again.  A couple of hours later, I made the decision to put the Pitocin back on, because I just didn’t see this ever becoming true active labor.

That was the low point for me emotionally.  Since my other labors were 6 hours and 5 hours, we thought we would have a baby by 3pm at the latest.  And there I was at 9pm, mad at myself for even coming in that day, and acres away from having a baby.

The good news was that I handled the surges really well.  Once labor did FINALLY kick into full gear, I did great.  Each phase was still three times as long as usual for me though, and contractions were at least 5 minutes apart all the way to the end.  Claudia thought it was crazy when I was crowning and then taking a 5 minute break, but I couldn’t do anything about it!

And in the end, coming in so early was all for nothing, because Jasmine Marie arrived at 12:40am on March 1st.  My husband didn’t get the awesome birthday we went in for.  But the really important part was that she was perfectly healthy and over 8 lbs.  My body might not have been ready for labor yet, but my baby was just fine.  And I am really proud to say that I never lost focus in this labor!
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Thanks again for everything!  I’m really glad I got the chance to come back to class before this birth, because I really think that helped.  I’ve learned a lot from each birth – and this one taught me that if you go in before your baby wants to, labor goes from an intense 5 hours to a drawn out and boring 14 hour ordeal.  Next time I am standing my ground!

-Sarah