Eivin's birth story

As promised...

Labor started on Tuesday evening. I was able to sleep between contractions at first but then had to get up and work through them in the wee hours of the morning. I also wanted to let MH get as much sleep as possible because he was actually sick and fighting a nasty cold...poor guy! I labored at home all day on Wednesday until ctx were 3mins apart for an hour. That was our indicator to pack up the car and head in. I was checked out and told I was a "stretchy 1cm". I was like "you're F'ing kidding me". So I got some morphine for pain management and to help get some sleep since it had been about 24 hours by then. And we were sent home. 

The morphine worked for between contractions but not during them. Then, at 10pm on Wednesday my water broke at home. I kept laboring at home in my own not wanting to not make progress and to be sent home again so I was able to hold out until 3am on Thursday morning. Then we headed to the hospital where they confirmed my water did break and I was, in fact, in labor (um.....DUH!!!). They admitted me. I was given fentanyl to "take the edge off" and I got a good amount of rest while laboring through walking and in the tub. But my progress was very, very slow. I was at 2cm at time of admission to the hospital and was at a 3 by noon on Thursday when they started me on pitocin and set my epidural. Sweet relief!!!!!

From there I didn't progress until 6pm when I was checked and at a 4, then a 5 by 9pm and a 6 by midnight. They kept putting pitocin levels up then down trying to make my contraction pattern more regular. During this time baby C's heart rate was dropping with each contraction then accelerating after the contraction was over. Very scary to hear that every couple of minutes. They placed an amnio infusion to help give him a bit of a cushion. And they placed me on pure oxygen both of which helped him a lot at first but the longer my sloooow labor progressed the more concerned they got about how he was handling all this. 

My doctor finally said when I was 8cm that she was going to try to manually stretch me to a 10 as I pushed through contractions. I gave that everything I had and pushed like a boss. She was able to do it and I was finally fully dilated at 6:30 on Friday morning and she said she'd give me an hour to push. I pushed with everything in me and gave it my all but an hour later when she checked me Eivin had not moved at all (turns out he was presenting in an asynclitic position). We agreed that between him being in such distress plus both of us showing signs of infection that it was c-section time. 

At 8:33 Friday morning he arrived!!! 7lbs 5oz and 20.5" of pure love. He spent 48 hours in the NICU being monitored and tested for an infection but it came back negative and he was discharged with us the next day. I was able to do skin to skin and BF him about an hour after surgery and he was immediately a champ when it came to eating (takes after me there  ).