I, again, was blessed with a complication-free pregnancy with Miss Rosamund. As I approached my due date, I would never have thought that the 4th would be the longest pregnancy, yet there we stood, in the waiting room on her due date for my scheduled induction, having failed to enter labor spontaneously.
My mom took me to this induction, just like she had for Freddie's, so Greg could take care of dropping kids off at school, preschool, and daycare. This time, they got me right back in a room without any waiting, and my IV was started with pitocin by 7:20 AM. As I was already at 3 cm to start, I didn't need the cervical Foley to help the cervix dilate. I assumed this meant that labor would progress much more quickly.
By 11:00, contractions were starting to be more regular and painful, though nothing that I couldn't tolerate. It seemed they were waiting to break my water until after I had the epidural, so I elected to get it right then, hoping that breaking the water would be the accelerator to the process that was getting pretty boring. When the resident broke my water, she noted there was meconium in the fluid and told the nurse that we'd need the pediatricians at the time of delivery. Meconium can be a sign of fetal distress during labor and also carries a risk of inhalation and lung injury/pneumonia/difficulty breathing upon delivery.
I got a little bit of relief from the epidural right away, and we plugged along through labor. Rosamund's heart rate began to dip significantly with every contraction, and rolling from side to side didn't seem to be helping. I was hoping that maybe things were progressing enough that we were getting close to delivery and could tolerate this a little longer, but cervical check showed that 5 hours into pitocin, I was only at 4-5 cm. They decided to put in internal monitors - both a scalp electrode aswell as an intrauterine pressure monitor and infused fluid back into the uterus to cushion Rosamund. By this time, with contractions getting stronger, it started to feel like the epidural wasn't working well. I got no change every time I hit the bolus button, even after the anesthesia resident had increased the basal rate. I was feeling pretty miserable and was starting to feel pressure, so I had the labor and delivery nurse check me again, and by 1:30 I was at 8 cm. We called anesthesia to increase the epidural again, since I went all the way to 8 cm with minimal relief from the epidural. Once the pain was under better control (around 2:30 PM) the heart rate seemed to improve as well.
I kept feeling subsequently more and more pressure, so the nurse checked me again and I was at a 9. She placed the call to Dr. Pool to let her know to start heading in and shortly after the resident found me to be complete. I literally felt as though her head were right there with every contraction. As soon as Dr. Pool got in the room and got the delivery tray pulled up, with my feet in the stirrups, Rosamund delivered her head spontaneously with the next contraction. A tiny push by me (not even during a contraction) delivered the rest of her body. The pediatricians had not yet even arrived to the delivery, so Dr. Pool aggressively suctioned her mouth, but she started crying right away and was placed on my chest. She immediately took to breastfeeding while I got sewn up. At 8 pounds 10 ounces, she was our biggest baby by far!
