Pregnancy 2010 - October

I don't know why the link isn't working ... here's the story:

Symptoms started pretty early for me, bloody show for over a week, painful contractions on and off for about a week. On Thursday September 16th The contractions were finally consistantly painful, however too spread out ... and so we continued waiting. Friday the contractions greaw closer together but were not painful enough. With my doctors blessing I had acupuncture done to induce labor which resulted in INTENSE contractions during the session ... but still nothing regular and bad enough to be getting close to active labor.



Finally, after 2 days of early labor and hardly any sleep, on Saturday, September 18th at 5am I was awaken with a cluster of BAD contractions. After the cluster finally stopped the contractions continued about every 10 minutes, then 8 minutes, and by the time my doula came around 9am the contractions were about every 7 minutes. We stayed at the apartment walking stairs, bouncing on birth ball, and was on the toilet A LOT haha. Standing made for the worse contractions! I had so much fake labor during the pregnancy though that it still felt surreal, i honestly didn't completely feel like this was it, even though I knew it was.



Finally, around noon we headed to Swedish since I was afraid that if we waited much longer the ride was going to suck even more. When we got there the triage nurse checked me and I was 100% effaced and 2cm dialated. My contractions were about every 4 minutes by this point so they went ahead and admitted me. I walked a little and tried the jet tub, but was suffering from back labor which was HORRIBLE! i was also dealing with cluster contractions where the contractions would come back to back or on top of each other. Finally, after assuring my doula and husband that I REALLY did want an epidural (I was previously hoping for a natural birth), I recieved an epidural around 2pm-ish. The break was much appreciated after 3 days of early labor and 2 nights of limited sleep, however after the epidural was given the contractions slowed down a bit and continued to come in clusters with big breaks inbetween.



After several hours and only slightly more dialation, the doctor requested to put a internal contraction monitor in to see how strong the contractions were. The fear being that the contractions weren't strong enough to make progress. In order to put the monitor in the doctor had to break my water. After monitoring me for awhile they determined they did need to give me pitocin to make the contractions stronger ... after a few more doses of that I was finally fully dialated and feeling the urge to push around 11pm on Saturday September 18th ... BUT ayden was on his side so they weren't able to deliver him in that position. We decided to try and turn him naturally so I got into a side prone position for about 3 hours. At 2pm the doctor checked me again and Ayden was face down (Finally!) and i was given the ok to start pushing. Delivery went well, he crowned very quickly and was out in only an hour although it felt like it only took 10 minutes!



Ayden was placed on my belly, however he was very pale and not crying as much as they would like so they had to take him from me to check his oxygen level. His breathing sounded like there was fluid in his lungs and since he wasn't crying enough they called in a specialist. It was so hard to have Ayden across the room with my husband and mom being with him and not be able to see him or touch him. Soon enough they determined that he was fine and my baby boy was given back to me.



Ayden was born at 3:03am on Sunday September 19th, 2010 weighing in at 8lbs 7.5oz and was 21 inches long. He is a super happy baby and is a wonderful snuggle bug! We couldn't be more happy!