Gretchen was due November 17th and she showed no signs of coming on her own so we decided to induce on Saturday, November 26th - my Dad's birthday!
I was induced with Shelby so I knew what to expect - more or less. I checked into the hospital at 7:30 am and by 9:00 am I was all hooked up to the IV's and was getting the Pitocin drip to bring on contractions.
My nurse, who I ended up totally LOVING, botched her first attempt at putting in the IV. She punctured my vein and I bled a whole bunch. It hurt really bad and left a nasty bruise.
When I checked into the hospital I was dilated to 3 cm so my doctor/brother-in-law, Ryan, told me he'd come check on me around 2 pm and then he'd break my water. For the next 5 hours things went pretty well. I was having contractions, but I couldn't really feel them. The monitor I was hooked up to told me they were coming every 3 minutes and were fairly strong. Things seemed to be progressing. When Ryan came at 2 pm to check on me I was expecting to hear that I was dilated to at least a 5 or 6. He told me I was at a 3.5. Only a 1/2 an inch of progress in 5 hours!! What?!?!! Ryan decided to break my water in hopes of speeding things up. After he broke my water I got an epidural in anticipation of things moving along rather quickly. For the next 2 or 3 hours I sat around watching movies and waiting for my contractions to speed up and intensify. But, instead of speeding up and getting stronger the contractions totally stopped. At about 5 pm Ryan told me he'd have to ramp up the Pitocin even more to get things going. He said that he didn't think I'd be ready until about 9 pm. Ugh. More waiting. Since we thought we'd have about 4 more hours Travis and I started to watch another movie. About 15 minutes into the movie I started feeling really uncomfortable even though my contractions still weren't too strong or close together. My nurse had the anesthesiologist come back and give me a boost in my epidural. Since I was feeling really uncomfortable my nurse decided to check my cervix to see if there was any progress. What I heard next was, "Oh my gosh, I need to call your doctor. You are ready to go!" Apparently, I went from being about 4-5 cm dilated to 10 cm in about 15 minutes! The baby also went from being at a -1 station to a +3 in 15 minutes as well! Ryan told my nurse to turn off the Pitocin to slow the contractions so he could make it to the hospital in time. Unfortunately, when Ryan got to the hospital 15 minutes later my contractions totally stopped. So we had to turn the Pitocin back on and wait for the contractions to start up again. We ended up waiting about 1 1/2 hours. My contractions still never got very strong, but I managed to push through 4 contractions before little Gretchen was born! A total of 17 minutes! Not bad at all!!
Waiting for the contractions to start up, again.
Ryan getting everything set up!
Gretchen arrived on Saturday, November 26th at 7:57 pm. Weighing in at 6 lbs 14 oz and 20 inches long.
Big Sister meeting Little Sister! 
The Grandparents
3 comments:
You look AMAZING - not fair, I'm always hiding all my hospital picture! So happy for you guys, and glad she made it here safe and sound.
YAY!!!! Thanks for posting. Wow. Sometimes I can't believe all we see for 9 months is hearburn and constipation and aliens in our belly, but in fact it's a cute baby like yours. Wow. I am so glad things worked out well -- 17 minutes is NOT BAD!! I hope my story is as good as yours. Congrats!
Crazy! So glad you have your sweet little girl now. I love the pictures of Shelby with her. How fun!
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