Week 40

So week 40 of the pregnancy started uneventful. I had taken the week off from work and was just hanging around the house doing nothing (yes I was actually doing nothing!). On Tuesday I had just taken a shower and decided to lay down and get some sleep. When I got up from my nap I felt a small gush of water. As I tried to decided if I peed my pants or my water broke I called the Dr's office and they told me to come in and they'd figure out what happened. So a few hours later a nervous Keith brought me to the Dr. office. The tests they ran for amniotic fluid traces were inconclusive so they sent us in for an ultrasound. Little Jayce was moving around but the u/s showed that I barely had any more amniotic fluid. Whether my water had broken or not they wanted to get Jayce out as the level of fluid was too low. The Drs decided that Keith and I should head right over to the hospital as they were going to induce labor. Thankfully we had our hospital bags in the car and were sort of prepared in case this was the situation.

We arrived at the hospital around 5:00 on Tuesday 23rd. After we settled in they hooked me up to a bunch of monitors to test my stats as well as Jayce's. Go to find out I was actually having contractions every 2 minutes apart. This might go easier than expected! But after a few hours they slowed down to every 4 minutes and then stopped. I was also still not dilated. So since they were going to have to inducing labor the next day, at 9:00 pm they gave me Cervidil to start ripening the cervix. I actually had minor contractions all night long spaced about 4 minutes apart so needless to say I did not get any sleep. Around 7:00 on Wednesday morning (Jayce's birthday) they started giving me low doses of Pitocin. This drug releases oxytocin into your bloodstream which makes your body think that you are in labor and causes you to have contractions. Around noon they checked my cervix and I was barely 3 cm dilated...but enough that they let me use the spa bath to hopefully ease the pain of the contractions. Now going into this whole event I was convinced I was going to have a medicine free labor and give birth in the tub...I mean why not have Jayce start out his life as a water baby! Well, after 15 minutes in the tub I decided that this was not going to plan! Labor was REALLY painful. Now I have had kidney stones, ruptured my Achilles and two miscarriages so you might think I could go through labor. Well, let's just say that by 1:00 I decided that I needed something to take the edge off but I was still NOT going to have the epidural. YEH, well by 2:00 I was actually screaming for the epidural. (yes I was that lady screaming in labor!) It could not come fast enough and everyone kept telling me only another few minutes. After talking with people afterwards I guess Pitocin is a pretty brutal drug and causes much more severe labor contractions that would occur naturally. By 3:00 I was comfortably numb and by 3:30 they said I could start pushing! I was like you've got to be crazy, I'm finally comfortable after 23 hours of being here and this is ready to be over! I asked them to lower the amount of anesthesia so that I could feel something for pushing. They said that most people can naturally push the baby out without feeling anything but they'd lower it anyways. I was glad I made that decision as I could then feel when the contractions were coming on and start to push. After about an hour Jayce made his entrance into this world at 4:39 pm weighing in at a chunky 8 lbs 15 oz and 20 3/4" long. I held him for a few minutes when I had noticed that he was gasping for air. The suctioned his air way again but he was still having some trouble breathing. Before I handed him off he had opened his eyes and stared at me long enough for us to share on special mother/baby moment.