Baby #3 arrived on the scene two-and-a-half-years after Baby #2.  This is the largest space between our children.  I gained a stupid amount of weight during this pregnancy (seriously; like 70 pounds) and by the time my due date rolled around, the baby still wasn’t here and I was MISERABLE.

 

I had a doctor’s appointment on my due date (March 26).  Based on the fact that Baby #2 was born a giant and the fact that this baby showed no signs of making its appearance anytime soon, the doctor recommended that I get induced.  Seeing as I’ve never been to medical school and know relatively little about, well, anything, I agreed even though I didn’t really want to be induced.  I cried a lot about the fact that I felt like my body had failed me since it was insisting on keeping the baby in there for all of eternity.  Everyone told me this was not the case, that the baby just needed a little motivation and that it could not, in fact, stay in there forever.  Then I cried more because I was over 40 weeks pregnant, completely crazy, and just wanted my water to break and the baby to choose to come on its own.

That didn’t happen though so I was scheduled for induction on Friday, March 28.  The doctor said we should arrive at the hospital at 9 AM.  Although I was once a very timely person who actually judged people who showed up places late, I am now one of those people who literally cannot show up anywhere on time.  It’s very depressing.  After dropping the kids off at school and grabbing a quick breakfast at McDonald’s (breakfast of champions, I know), we arrived about 15 minutes late to the hospital.  The nursing staff joked that they thought I had chickened out and wasn’t going to show.  Nope!  Just habitually tardy!  Like my baby, apparently.

I got checked in and checked out…only 1 cm dilated.  This baby was still not planning to come out on its own.

Just before 10:30 AM, the nurse inserted the pill to ripen my cervix. Once the pill was in place, I had to lay on one side for an hour while it worked its magic.  I spent this time watching Price Is Right while my husband educated me on the history and origin of apples.

Just before 11 AM, I started to feel cramps which, the nurse said, meant the pill was working.

Major League came on TV so we watched it.

Because I had tested positive earlier in my pregnancy for Strep B, the nurse started the antibiotics for that at 11:15 AM and I had to have them every 4 hours until the baby was delivered.  I’d explain more about this except that I don’t really know anything else.  Like I said, I’m not a doctor and clearly not an educated patient either.

At 11:30 AM, the hour of laying on my side was over, so I got up and my husband and I walked the halls for a while.  We talked some about baby names but mostly I refused to participate in the conversation because it’s impossible for us to agree on any good names.

At 12:15, my doctor came and checked me.  She said I was 2 cm dilated.  She decided this would be a good time to break my water.  In both my previous pregnancies, my water broke on its own and it was no big deal, besides being a little messy.  Having my bag of water broken with the medical equivalent of a crochet hook, on the other hand, was not as pain free.  And, as my husband noted, required the doctor to extract “a chunk of meat” from down there.  Pleasant.

After that lovely experience, my husband and I walked the halls some more where I felt some contractions…although none that were getting us anywhere fast.

At 2:30 PM the contractions were starting to get stronger.  They still weren’t painful to the point that I had to breathe through them but they were definitely more noticeable.  At 3 PM the nurse checked and I was 3 cm and 70% effaced.  She commented that the baby’s head was very low.

Hubcap (as a refresher, that’s our nickname for my mom) brought my husband lunch at some point (Taco Bell…lunch of champions) and I ate my weight in red Jello and juice boxes.

The nurse came in to let me know that there was a patient being transported in from another hospital nearby who was very sick and in need of an emergency C-section.  Because there was no way of knowing how long that procedure would take, she suggested that I consider getting an epidural before that patient arrived.  At this point the contractions were strong but they were far enough apart that I had time to recover between them.  Had it not been for the emergency patient, I probably would have waited to get the epidural but since I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to get it at all, I decided that then was better than never so at 5:30 PM the anesthesiologist came in and gave me an epidural.  Getting it hurt more than I remember from my past two experiences and, I don’t want to assign blame or point fingers, but this is also the only epidural I’ve had that didn’t work properly.  The other two numbed my entire abdomen and both legs.  This one only took on the right side of my body.

At 6 PM the doctor checked me again and said I was 4 cm dilated.  Twenty minutes later the nurse started Pitocin because, although my contractions were strong, at 5 minutes apart, they were not coming close enough together to move the baby out.

The day nurse was a nice lady who had to wear a mask because she had apparently neglected to get her flu shot and therefore had to wear a mask until flu season officially ended on April 1.  The night nurse, who came on at 7 PM, was a woman named Mila.  Mila was from the former Soviet Union.  She was NOT from Russia.  She gave my husband and me a long lecture on the topic and followed it up with a lesson on what is going on with the Ukraine.  Mila did not give the impression that she handled stressful situations well.  On more than one occasion, she lost the baby on the monitor and took upwards of 20 minutes looking for it before some other nurse came in to help her.

Just before 8 PM, I was 6 cm dilated.  At 8:15 PM I asked for the anesthesiologist to come back and check my epidural because I was able to feel the contractions on my left side.  He came and checked it and essentially did nothing because I was able to feel everything on my left side throughout the rest of labor and delivery.  My right leg was so numb that I couldn’t even move it but I swear I could have hopped down the hall on my left leg, it was so free from anesthesia.  And it remained this way for hours after delivery.

At 9:09 PM, I texted Hubcap to say that I was 10 cm dilated!

But…

Of course there’s a “but.”

I was fully dilated and ready to push but my doctor was not at the hospital.  She was at the hospital that is located ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN.  And there were apparently no other doctors in the hospital who wanted to deliver a baby.  So the nurses told me I had to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

How long do you think is reasonable to make a person wait to push their baby out?  Hint:  The only reasonable answer is ZERO SECONDS.

I waited one hour.  One whole hour.  SIXTY MINUTES.  Do you know what that’s like?   It’s not fun.   I was so angry that I couldn’t do anything but cry.  I wasn’t crying because I was in pain, necessarily.  I was mostly crying just because I was so angry, but didn’t have the energy to yell at anyone.  And crying seemed like the next best option.

During this time the nurse had to call in back up and thankfully that nurse had less of a “chicken with its head cut off” approach to the current situation.

And when the doctor finally got there, I refused to look at her.  I just stared at the ceiling and cried while the doctor and nurse argued over who was going to break the end of the bed off so I could have the baby.

I remember looking at the clock at about 10:07 PM.  The doctor left the room so I could do my practice push…a ritual that I cannot understand.  What does the doctor do in the hallway during this time?  Psyche herself up?  Pat herself on the back?  Eat Jello? No one knows.

My husband, the nurse and I readied for the practice push and then, halfway through, the nurse started shouting for me to stop.  STOP PUSHING!  She ran to the phone and called for the doctor to come into the room immediately.

In came the doctor and we all sat there for a while, in an awkward silence, while we waited for the next contraction to arrive.  It took what seemed like an eternity as I tried to avoid eye contact with everyone in the room on account of my rage.

Finally, the next contraction arrived.  I pushed that one push and out came Baby #3.  All 8 pounds 9 ounces and 20 inches of her. My husband says she was at least half an inch longer but refused to straighten her legs so the nurse could measure. She came out so fast that my husband said the doctor literally had to catch her.  I heard my husband tell me, “It’s a girl!”

The doctor commented that the cord was wrapped around her body (not around her neck, thank goodness).  She cried immediately (Babies #1 and #2 did not cry right away).  My husband got to cut the cord.

Despite my hesitancy about getting induced, overall it was a painless process that worked out magnificently.  It was a relatively long day but the labor itself was not very long.  In the end we got another healthy, beautiful baby and that’s all we could have asked for!