Birth Story and Natural Labor Induction- Very Long

On Friday February 12th I woke up excited to start the day, my day of old wives tale labor inducing fun.

Im not sure if it is coincidental, or if one or all of these factors played a part in inducing my labor.

I started off with a little acupressure that a reader emailed me about (Thank you Jessica). I laid in bed squeezing the pressure points in between my thumb and forefinger before getting started on the day. An hour later my mom picked me up and we headed to the mall. We made a few returns and then walked around the entire mall making the necessary stops at Baby Gap and Gymboree. I didnt feel anything... just tired.

From there we went on our search for eggplant parmesan. The restaurant I planned on going to had closed the nearest location, so we drove to the other one, to find it didnt open until 4pm. We resulted in going to the sister restaurant which was delicious and had the same "famous" eggplant parmesan.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was! Eggplant just doesnt sound appetizing!

We left the restaurant and headed for another mall to do a bit more walking and shopping. The weather channel had been threatening snow, but in Georgia we hardly ever see any so we just blew it off.

A few hours later my yard looked like this....

Some say that the lower pressure in a snow storm can bring women into labor, so this could have also played a part in it.

When the snow was actually on the ground, I decided I better stop with all of my labor inducing "tricks" since the roads would probably be freezing over night. Brad and I laid in bed and watched the opening olympic ceremonies and fell asleep around 11:30.

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At 1:30 I woke up with bad stomach pains. It quickly went away and I tried to go back to sleep. About 10 minutes later I had another one. They were too strong to sleep through so I decided to get up and time them to see if there was any consistency to them. For the first hour they were very sporadic but pretty painful. I thought I was just being a big baby so I decided to go sit in a hot bath and keep timing them.

I snuck into the bathroom because I didnt want to wake up Brad (didnt want him to panic), and somehow ran a whole bath without him hearing. I spent the next 3 hours in the bath where my contractions went from 10-6 minutes apart.

At 6 minutes I thought I might ought to start getting ready to make my way to the hospital because the contractions obviously werent going away. I washed and dried my hair and went to add my blowdryer to my hospital bag. Brad heard me stirring around and asked me where I was going. I told him that I thought I should probably get ready to go to the hospital since I had been in labor the last 5 hours....

He JUMPED out of bed and started making a plan to get us there. He insisted we needed to leave right then (the reason I didnt tell him 5 hours before). He called every cop he knew on night duty to check the roads. All of the roads were frozen over, so at 5:30am we decided it probably was best to leave then.

What normally would have been a 10 minute drive was 25 minutes with the frozen roads. My contractions went from 6-4 minutes apart during the drive. I was so afraid I was going to end up giving birth on the side of the road.

We arrived at labor and delivery and they quickly put me into a holding room to check my progress. They left me there for 30 minutes while dealing with labor emergencies, apparently the low pressure sent lots of people into labor and one woman came in holding her baby that she had at home.

When they finally got around to me, I was 6 cm dilated and they had a room waiting for me. The Dr came in soon after to give me an epidural. At that point... I was in heaven. To all women that deliver naturally, my hats off to you! That was NOT for me.

I spent the morning G Chatting on my phone and waiting for labor to progress more. The epidural slowed my contractions so I was given pictocin to speed them back up. At 10am my Dr came in and told me that I was at 9cm and would probably have Keating within the next few hours. He came back at 11am and informed me that I was 10 cm dilated and I was going to start pushing around noon.

Brad was starting to get bored waiting for some action when we first arrived in our room.

11:30 came and my nurse had me start work on pushing. At that point Brad had been in the hall talking to my dad, so I told him he could stay out there for awhile. I didnt really want him seeing all that and he didnt really want to! I pushed for 30 minutes while watching in the mirror... something I thought I would NEVER do! But it helped see what I was actually doing since I was completely numb (thanks to my glorious epidural) Around 12 the Dr arrived and was surprised by my quick progress. We called in Brad for the last few exciting minutes and with 2 good pushes Keating Bradford came into the world.

When he came out he didnt get in a good first cry so he had to be put on CPAP and they had to suck out his lungs. It took 45 excrutiating (for me) minutes of working on him to get him breathing clear. All I wanted was to hold my baby in my arms.

Finally, he was ready to go and I got to officially meet Keating. It was love like I have never felt. The way he looked up at me just melted my heart. We spent the next minutes figuring out who he looked like (his dad, with my nose, chin and toes)

I cant imagine a baby more perfect!

For un-fun stuff: I had a 3rd degree episiotomy and a nice little hemi. These things have made the aftermath not so fun, but every day gets better. When I look at Keating it makes everything worth it.

And thats my birth story folks!