She came when she needed to: induced labor

Right now my girl  is sleeping like an angel so I finally get to write this email which I wanted to do since a few days.

Here is how things went during labor:
My induction was scheduled for Friday night, but since the hospital was booked out we had to wait till Saturday morning which was totally fine with me. ( elevated blood pressure started 2 weeks before due date so they told me the risk was too high I needed an induction)

We had tried pretty much everything to have her come on her own, daily acupuncture, prostaglandin, primrose oil and hypnosis…..thanks again Pat for your session with me, it probably moved things further along and definitely took some of my anxiety about the whole procedure away.
When they checked me in at the hospital I was 50% effaced and had mild contractions before they placed the misoprostol pill.  Now, I realized I had Braxton hicks since several days, just didn’t know how they felt. I only needed one pill  which moved things far enough along and then the Pitocin drip started in early afternoon.
Labor started easy and became harder and harder with some contractions and in the end with only half a minute or less of a break in between or two contractions on top of each other.
In the beginning I  listened to track 6, but once labor got more intense I just had to breathe into it, make loud sounds and let that wave pass somehow.

My partner helped me all along the way with hip squeezes and massage of my low back, I squeezed his hands so tight at times that I probably nearly broke his joints. And panicked if he had to run to the bathroom in between that’s how much  his touch helped as a distraction with the pain. I couldn’t have done it without him. My daughter also came out with her hand waving.

I was so excited when we reached the pushing phase, knowing things would finally end even though that took another hour and took every last spark of energy left, out of me.

During labor and contractions, I was lucky that my blood pressure was stable and actually dropped at times instead of rising to dangerous levels, in the beginning I often imagined the BP panel that Pat had created in the hypnosis session to tune things down.

Overall, my birth experience at the hospital was great though. They really tried to accommodate my birth plan from cord cutting to least interventions as possible.

She was placed on my belly for 3 hours after birth, we started breastfeeding right away and whilst lying  there they checked her lungs and temperature.

Only once we switched rooms did they take her for 5 minutes to weigh her and repeat a short exam. The nurse who was with me during the night and labor was awesome, helped me with pushing and breathing, repositioning as well as the midwives who tried to use least interventions as possible. All the nurses were really nice in postpartum care.

The only thing in the end that bothered us was that we wanted to go home after the first night, but they wanted us to stay for observation at least 2 nights  and it did not feel very restful with people popping in every 2 hours checking vitals, performing hearing test,  heel prick test,… cafeteria food……….

But, again overall I had a great experience and everything turned out as good as I was hoping for. It definitely changed my judgment to a positive perspective on the hospital birth experience.

The parents have requested no pictures or names.

Posted October 11, 2014