I Thank God Every Day!

On December 26th, 2014 I went to the hospital to be induced with my third daughter. I was 39 weeks and 2 days. The induction was planned by me as I was in so much pain I was in constant tears. I arrived at the hospital at 7:45am and was 4 cm dilated. At 11:30 that morning, the doctor came in and broke my water. It was my goal to allow my body to do what it could do naturally with as little intervention as possible.

A few hours went by and there were no contractions. The nurse and I thought it would be best to start me on pitocin to get my labor moving along, and it worked. Almost immediately, contractions started coming, but they were not bad. Not only was I able to breathe through them but I was also able to keep myself occupied by playing games on my tablet. My nurse came in a couple more times to bump up the amount of pitocin I was receiving in my IV and of course the contractions started getting closer together and stronger. Very painful and little I could do to keep my mind off of the pain.

At around 4:30 pm, my nurse came in to check me and I was dilated to 6 cm. At this point the contractions were so intense and so close together that I was having troubles breathing through them or catching my breath between them. I opted to get an epidural to help relax my mind and my body. By the time the epidural was placed, I had dilated to 8 cm. I was very glad to have received the epidural when I did.

An hour after that it was time to start pushing since I was fully dilated. It seemed to be going great! I had the father of my daughter on one side holding one leg and the godmother holding my other leg. However, things changed when two nurses pushed each of them out of the way, leaned the bed back as far as it would go, and I had another nurse on top of me pushing on my abdomen. My daughter has gotten stuck. She was losing oxygen and it was a very intense few moments.

When she did finally arrive, she was not breathing and she was a dark blue. It took what seemed like forever before she took her first breath and began crying. I had broken down because not only was I scared that I could have lost her, but also because I was relieved to hear her cry and know she was okay. I have delivered two other daughters: one by c-section and one by VBAC, and neither of those were scary. I am not a religious person, but from that moment, all I can do when I look into her beautiful face is thank God that He didn’t let anything happen to my baby girl!