Birth....at last

First let me say my beautiful son, Ezekiel, was born today at 10:35 am. 9 pounds 7 ounces, 21.5 inches long. He is as healthy as could possibly be imagined, breast fed within the first hour of being born and Josh and I are more blessed then we can express.

Next let me admit that nothing, and I mean nothing, went according to plan. I wanted to birth naturally without any interventions and instead had every single intervention possible except c-section. I feel like a failure, I failed every step along the way. And I know I got a beautiful baby and that should be enough, and it is enough, but at the same time I cant help wishing it could have gone differently.

So here it goes. We arrived at the hospital for our induction at 7 pm Monday. I was 3 centimeters dilated and the baby was at 0 station so they decided that cervical ripening wouldn't be necessary and I could start on low dose Pitocin right away. By 9 pm I was all set up and the game had begun. Josh and I watched some TV and tried to sleep.

In the morning, around 7 am or so, my contractions were still weak, I couldn't even feel them very much. I ate a small breakfast and we started to raise the Pitocin levels, which seemed to work pretty well. At least I was now getting medium strong contractions. Josh and I tried walking the halls, sitting on the birth ball, rocking in a rocking chair...everything to get things going faster and stronger. At noon my midwife decided to check me again and see what progress I had made after 15 hours of Pit. I was 3 centimeters...still.

We decided the Pit alone obviously wasn't doing enough. The next step was to break my water and see if maybe that could get things going faster, maybe even enough to turn the Pit down or even off. So break the waters we did. There was a little meconium, but not enough to stress about, and the contractions became much stronger. More walking, rocking, sitting, kneeling, swaying, and everything else under the sun ensued.

Still when I was checked about 3 hours later no progress had been made. Still 3 centimeters, so we started turning the Pit up again. Contractions became steadily harder and harder to deal with at that point and I became more and more tired. Josh and I pushed on, we tried every position and comfort procedure in the book, got in the jacuzzi, ect. By 9 pm the contractions were 1 minute on to 2 minutes off and about as strong as I could handle. My whole body was shaking and exhaustion was setting in. My midwife decided to check again. 3 centimeters. We all decided that my body was too tired to be able to go on any longer. We had to start an epidural.

After placing the epidural we tried to calm down and get some sleep. They put in an intra-uterine moniter so they could see how strong the contractions were and kept raising the Pitocin levels through the night, it didn't look promising but at some point in the middle of the night I was checked and found to be 5 centimeters. Only a 2 centimeter change after over 24 hours but at least we were over the hump. My midwife's shift ended at 7 so she checked again right before leaving, hallelujah I was at 10 centimeters and she thought I'd be able to push soon.

Between 8 and 8:30 I started to push with the help of the hospital nurses and back-up OB, they were absolutely wonderful. Let me add now that actually everyone was wonderful during this whole time, and that's saying something because we went thru 4 nurse shifts while we were there! So I pushed. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. My epidural was starting to wear off so I was even able to feel a lot of it. By 10 the baby's heart-rate was starting to show a lot of distress though, they said I had to get an episiotomy to try to speed up labor, I just wasn't big enough. By 10:30 I was so close and they were so worried that they had to use the forceps. They barely tugged him and out he came all of a sudden in 2 pushes. Causing a 4th degree tear in the process.

NICU was waiting in the room to whisk the baby away if needed but right away he gave a good yell and a good poop. His 1 minute Apgar was a 6 and his 5 minute a 9. He was just fine and by the time I had pushed out the placenta they gave him to me to hold. I was just glad to be done. They stitched me up, I fed the baby. We both had our vitals taken and everything was fine.

There was a little concern about Zeke's blood sugar levels but after a second feeding he was fine.
Then there was some worry about me hemoraging, especially after such a long labor, but that seems to be fixing itself now as well. So now I'm just trying to take everything that's happened in the last 3 days in. My son and my husband are asleep, I should probably be too but my adrenaline is still high.