I guess it started around 7:30 Saturday evening when I discovered part of my mucus plug when I went to the bathroom. I was excited, but not really expecting anything. I was in bed later that night when my water broke at approximately 10:45. I have to say that it was one of the strangest feelings ever, and if it's really that rare for your water breaking to be a huge gush, call me rare. It was everywhere in an instant!!! We called my doctor's office and got a little confused when the line didn't role over to the on-call person, but called labor & delivery and headed on in.
They confirmed that I had, indeed, ruptured, as if there was any question. I hadn't really begun contracting and was still only 25% effaced and 1 cm dilated, so they gave me two hours for things to kick in on their own. At 4 am on Sunday, I still hadn't progressed, so they started the pitocin, something I hadn't wanted, but knew that I needed. The started me on too high a dose to begin with and we started seeing some decelerations in Kaylee's heart rate, so they stopped the pit, flushed my system, and started it again, more slowly.
Things started out pretty easy. Mike and I walked, chatted with family, responded to texts and sat on the birthing ball a lot. I would later abandon the ball when I got really nauseous. There is a lot in there that I don't remember, but by late Sunday evening, I was fully effaced and dilated to 9 with just a small lip left on the front of my cervix. Despite the ridiculous, pit-induced contractions, that lip wouldn't go away, so they began having me try to push while a nurse held it out of the way to see if that would help. All it did was make me want to push with every contraction, so when they told me to go back to "breathing through" the contractions, I was in excruciating pain trying to not push. I think it was at this point that I relented and finally accepted a dose of stadol. I was really wanting an unmedicated labor, but it was just too intense. At one point, I even remember thinking that I would be better off if they'd just take Kaylee via c-section, but I'm happy to say that didn't happen.
At 2:38 am on Monday, October 26, after about an hour of good solid pushing, Kaylee Beth Drews was born. Here is when another of my ideals went out the window...I didn't get her put directly on my stomach because she was rushed over to the warmer and surrounded by about five nurses. I could barely even see what was going on. Kaylee's one-minute apgar score was a 2, five-minute was a 4, ten-minute was a 7, and she eventually got a 9, but I don't know how long that took. Next thing I knew, Mike was following Kaylee's entourage to the nursery while my doctor tried to get my placenta out. I pushed part of it out, but when she said that part was still attached and that she'd have to reach in and help separate it from my uterus, I accepted a second dose of stadol.
When I eventually got to see Kaylee, she was in the nursery covered in all kinds of monitors and under an oxygen hood. I then watched as they placed an iv in the back of her hand. She looked so pathetic, but she was alive. I finally got to hold my daughter at 9:00 Monday morning, nearly seven hours after her birth. The days since have been an exercise in frustration, dealing with jaundice, anemia, and troubles with feeding, but we are finally home, and Kaylee is asleep in her crib in the next room. It was a long, frightening couple of days, but I am one happy momma.
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