My labor and delivery

My contractions got even stronger and were about 2 mins apart so the dr said come on to the hospital. Well when I got there at 8:38 pm I was only 1cm dilated. So she said she would come check me in a few hrs to see if I progressed. Well two hrs later I was only 2cm. Normally they would send women home for this but since I had good strong contractions and it was my second labor, they admitted me. Finally I was able to get up and walk the floor. I had to walk for atleast an hour at a time before getting back in bed. I kept feeling stronger contractions and I felt more pressure in my inner thighs. So I went to my room and got the nurse to call my dr in. Dr checked me and after just an hour of walking I was 4cm. So she sent me walking some more. Well I walked for hours and things began to slow down. So I was given an IV with pitocin and was offered pain meds. I declined cause my goal was to go natural. I started to have back pain from a car accident yrs ago so my dr gave me a little nubain , it was such a small dose that I didn't notice a change in the back pain. Finally I was 7cm and my water hadn't broken. My dr asked me if she could rupture it and I declined. I wanted to walk a little more first so I walked for another hour. She checked me again and I was still at 7cm so I let her break my water. Soon as she did things went very quick. She left to check on a patient after setting up the table. Well she was gone about 5mins and I felt the urge to push so I pushed my call button. The nurse came in and said "you were just 7 breathe though it and don't push. I doubt you're 10 already". So I made her get my dr to come in. Well I was indeed 10 cm and just started pushing while my dr was changing gloves. After one good push his head was halfway out. His heart rate started to decline so she gave me oxygen and said let's hurry and get this baby out. Well another push and his head and shoulder was out. My dr said reach down and pull your baby the rest of the way out so at 9:23 am july 30,2008 my baby was born. That was the best feeling ever. I didn't care that he was bloody and gooey. I put him right on my stomach until my hubby cut the cord. The nurse was nice enough to let him lay with me while she did his apgar. He scored 9 on the first one. While I delivered the placenta I handed him over for his second apgar and he got another 9. I was so happy to see my baby was healthy after all I went through to bring him into the world. He weighed 7lbs 15.6 ozs and was 22 inches long. My labor was longer with him than my first born but I'm glad that I got to do it natural though. I just kept myself relaxed and focused on breathing the whole time. If any of you are pregnant right now don't think you have to go natural. If you need meds take them, it doesn't make you any less of a woman. I just went natural because I did it with my first and I have a fear of epidurals. I'm a nurse myself and I hate needles. Maybe by getting poked so much in nursing school lol. But its your birth so do it how you want to. Make a birth plan and make your dr and the staff stick to it. After all it is your body and your baby. Thanks for reading,
Patrice
PS if you have a birth story that you want to share or a pregnancy or ttc story, I would love to hear it. Just send me a comment with the direct link to the blog post of just simply comment to this post and tell me all about it.

My TTC journey

This is yet another hard post for me to write. My husband and I decided to try for another baby. So I went to the internet and started doing my research. The first time I got pregnant we didn't try it just happened. We weren't even planning a family at that point. So anyway I came across a website called fertility friend. I immediately joined and began to receive emails on TTC. I never knew there was so much involved. So I began to chart my periods and my temp and monitored my cervical mucus. Everytime I saw the increase in temp I got so excited and figured we would have success the first try. Well little did I know, it was going to be a journey. Our first try I got a negative pregnancy test result. So I started chatting with other women and learned some of their tricks. One suggested that I use ovulation predictor kits. So I sent my husband to the pharmacy and started right away. Well a few days later it showed that ovulation was near so we started having sex again. I think so much pressure was on us , we didn't wanna get another negative but we actually ended up missing my "O" day. So by this time I was hurt and crying everyday thinking something was wrong with me. Then my husband felt as if he was to blame and that he was letting me down. So we both agreed not to temp,chart or use the OPK's for a month. We were hoping that if we just had sex on a regular and didn't pay attention to any of this that we would finally get our positive hpt. Well that didn't happen and by this time I was totally depressed. I started chatting more with the women from fertility friend and listening to their stories. I felt bad because I was complaining about not getting pregnant after 3-4 months of trying and most of these women were trying for a year or longer. They were getting fertility treatments and still no success. I felt so guilty and selfish that I stopped talking about it for a while. Well finally two months later we got it right. I woke up feeling sick and had tender breasts and AF was very late. Several of the girls in the chatroom told me to go POAS and I'm like huh? I wasn't used to all of that lingo. So they said go pee on a stick. Well I did and I got a faint positive. So I decided that before telling hubby I would test the next day with FMU. Well I tested and it was a strong positive. I didn't know how I should react because I knew there were women in the chat room who got BFN's the same day. But they wanted to hear anyways so I shared a picture of my test. Well later that day I called to make a dr appt for prenatal care. I had my first appt and everything went well. Then a few days later morning sickness came with a vengeance. It was worse than my first pregnancy. I couldn't keep anything down,not even liquids. So I went to the dr and she told me that I had lost 4 lbs in just a few days. I began to panic by this point. So she placed me on a different prenatal vitamin called preemesis. Which has extra b6 and b12 and is supposed to help with morning sickness. So the dr wanted me to follow up in a week. Well during that week I was still throwing up everything I came in contact with. So when I went in I lost 6 more pounds. She decided to put me in the hospital and pump me full of vitamins and IV fluids for two days. I started to feel a little better. Well at my next appointment I lost 3 pounds. By this time I was taking phenergen and reglan with no success. So she decided to put me on a nutritional drink called boost. So I had to drink 3 a day in hopes that my body would absorb some of it and make me gain weight. It started off working good and I began to gain a pound or two a week to make up for what I lost. Then I started to back slide again. So she placed me a medication that's normally given to cancer patients to help them with nausea from chemo. Its called Zofran , though it was very expensive it really worked. So now I was on boost 3x/day and zofran twice a day. My dr put me on bedrest and said I was a high risk. At first I was upset about the bedrest thing. But eventually I got over it. I had to do it for my baby. Well it helped and I started gaining weight though it wasn't much. I gained about a pound or two a month. I felt it wasn't enough but the dr said as long as I didn't lose any, we wouldn't worry. Well I went for an Ultrasound and it showed the baby measured small. So she referred me to a dietician who I saw weekly. I had to literally eat all day and I was eating foods high in fat and protein. That began to make me sick so my dr decided taking zofran orally wasn't good enough. So I had a iv pump placed in my arm that was giving me zofran and b12. Yay finally success but I didn't get too excited cause each time I did something happened. Well I started having chest pain and shortness of breath. I knew I had heart problems but was symptom free for a few yrs. So I was sent to my cardiologist for a echocardiogram. It showed that the hole in my heart was leaking more blood then before. There was no way I could have surgery while pregnant. Instead I was placed on a king of hearts monitor. Its just a regular holter monitor but holters only monitor for up to 48 hrs. The king of hearts monitors for up to 4 months. So I wore this monitor and each time I felt chest pain or short of breath I had to push a button to record what happened. It monitors continuously but when you press the button it shows the control center you had an event and if its serious they call your dr right away. So when my monitor beeped that meant it was full. When this happened I had to call the control center and transmit my results. This was done by placing the phone directly over the monitor and it made a fax machine type sound until it was done. Well thank God I didn't have any major events. So my pregnancy progressed and things were fine for a while. As I neared 36wks my dr was worried that my baby was gonna be too big because there was no more room for him to grow. So she said at 38 wks she would probably induce me. Well on July 29 at 5:38 pm I started having contractions lasting 60 seconds and they were 4mins apart. My dr said call her right away when I was less than 5 apart cause since it was my second pregnancy she was worried I would labor quick. So here comes my birth story........... read the next post