My doctor did strip my membranes, and I started to have contractions later that day, but nothing very strong or regular, and they faded away in the evening. I was kind of disappointed!
I woke up Friday morning around 3am with contractions! They were coming about 4 minutes apart, and were getting a little stronger. Around 5am they slowed down though, enough that I fell asleep. I woke up again around 8 and got in the shower. And the contractions started to come back! When I got out of the shower and was getting ready for the day, I started timing them and they were about two to four minutes apart. We decided to go for a walk to see if that would help things roll along. While on our walk, the contractions were about 1 1/2 - 3 minutes apart. We decided that we would go to the hospital just in case this was the real thing. We got home, packed up the last minute stuff, and headed out.
At the hospital, we got checked in and a nurse checked me. She said I was 3cm, which was progress from the 2cm I was the day before at my appointment. She said they would watch my contractions for an hour and if I had made progress they would keep me there. She also said they would call my doctor and let him know I had checked in. The nurse came back about a half an hour later and said that Dr. Fowers would be there in just a little bit to break my water, and that he said because I was past my due date, and I was having regular contractions, and he was on call, there was no excuse to send me home. So at about 11:45 he came and broke my water, and I was officially admitted to the hospital (This was the first time in my entire life that I've been admitted to the hospital!).
Soon after my water was broken, my contractions started to get really intense. So much so that it was hard for me to breath or focus at all. We tried a couple of different positions to see if that would relieve some of the pain, but it didn't do much good. I knew that because I was only dilated to 3cm I would never make it all the way to 10cm having to bear so much pain and then have to push for who knew how long. I knew that I had reached my limit, and I opted for an epidural.
After the epidural was in and the medicine started to kick in, I felt so much better. Ben and I started to look through our baby name book again, because we still hadn't decided on a name for our baby. While we were working on that, I started to feel pain again in the right side of my pelvis. I let the nurse know, and she had me turn onto my right side and click the button that administered more medicine through the epidural. After that started to kick in on my right side, I turned over onto my back again (with help, because my right leg was now so numb that I couldn't move it at all). And shortly thereafter I started feeling pain on my left side and in the middle of my pelvis. I told the nurse this and she helped me roll to my left side and I pushed the button for more medicine. After a while it still wasn't working very well and the nurse gave me two more doses of meds and had the anesthesiologist come in and give me something else through the tube going into my back. I had a feeling that with this much medicine I would be so numb that I wouldn't be able to push later, but I trusted my nurse. By this point Ben and I had finished going through the name book and had started playing cards.
At some point the nurse checked me and said I was dilated to 6cm, and that it would probably be time to start pushing around 8pm. The nurse checked me again around 7pm, and said I was 9+cm. She said they would let me rest for an hour before they would have me start pushing. The nurse pulled out some of the equipment from the closet and turned on the warmer for baby. We kept playing cards for a while, and then I decided I needed to try and sleep for a little bit before it was time to go to work.
When we were first admitted to the hospital, we called my mom and let her know that we were there. She got ready and started to head this way. She arrived at the hospital just before eight, and we were able to say hi and give hugs before she headed down the hall to the waiting area.
The nurse came back in at eight and got the bed ready to go. I was so numb that I couldn't budge my legs. I couldn't feel any pain, but I also couldn't feel any pressure or urge to push, and this was a problem. Ben held my left leg, and my nurse held my right. Ben's job was to count to ten when I started pushing, the nurse's job was to tell me when to start pushing (because I couldn't feel any pressure), and my job was to push! I did the best I could, but I didn't feel like I was doing any good because I couldn't feel anything. The nurse kept telling me to push harder and give her more, so I did. After a while, she told me after a contraction, "maybe don't push quite so hard." So maybe I was doing some good. Haha. The nurse told me she was going to turn off my epidural for a little bit so that I would start to feel some pressure. And I started to after a little bit. By now it was me leading the pushing instead of the nurse telling me when to start and stop. I could tell when things were getting close because Ben's voice got more and more excited when he counted. The nurse told me she could see baby's head! Pretty soon the baby was about to crown, so the nurse called Dr. Fowers and he came and got all set up. After just a few more pushes, he told me that the baby's head was out. I could hear Ben grinning as he counted through my pushes. Dr. Fowers told me to look. I did, and I saw the top half of my baby's body. I bursted out in tears of joy! I couldn't believe my eyes. The next thing I knew, our baby was born and they were cleaning her up on my tummy. I watched them clamp the umbilical cord and Ben cut it. Then they took her to finish cleaning her off and to make sure she was healthy and to weigh her. All this time I was basically in hysterics. When they finally put her in my arms for the first time, I felt an enormous amount of love for this tiny person. I couldn't believe that after so long she was finally here. I felt so grateful and so blessed. I felt that my heart was about to burst with what I was feeling! I have honestly never felt more joy that I did at that moment.
Evelyn was born on July 26, 2013 at 9:26pm. She weighed 7lbs. 11 oz. and was 20in. long.
Oh Jess! Thank you for sharing! Congratulations! It sounds like you really did great! I'm so happy for all of you! Welcome little Evelyn!
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