Birth of Kiptyn on May 23, 2015
I was 9 days over due. I went for an ultrasound and the doctor was worried that my baby wasn’t growing well so she wanted me to be induced.
The following day I went to the hospital, I was nervous about being ‘induced’ after all that was not part of my birth plan. I had been 4cm’s dialated for weeks and despite all my efforts and various ‘tricks’ I wasn’t going in to labor. I arrived at the hospital in the afternoon and despite being a registered nurse myself-I was still nervous about being a patient and feeling like I was able to make decisions regarding my delivery. Luckily I was dilated and the doctor and I agreed that she would start by breaking my water. I pleaded with them to start with that and let me try to progress my labour naturally.
About an hour later a new OB came on and said she wanted to start me on a pitocin drip. She felt my labor wasn’t progressing ‘fast enough’. Even though at this point I was starting to feel contractions which was progression from the hour prior. I asked them to hold off for awhile as I could feel my body going into labor, she told me she would be back in 1 hour and if I hadn’t ‘progressed’ she would be starting the drip. At this point I was in tears, talking to my husband. Feeling fearful they would intervening when I could already feel contractions starting. They wanted to keep me on a continuous monitor which I didn’t feel was overly necessary but agreed to carry it around. My husband and I did lunges and squats the length of the hospital hallways. We did get a few strange looks but thankfully it worked and my contractions were 3 minutes apart after doing it for about an hour.
Fortunate for us, the doctor didn’t return as the hospital unit got very busy. My husband and I next went to the shower for a few hours. I felt great comfort in the shower and was able to try various standing/sitting/and lunge positions in there. After a little while in there I could feel I was going through the transition period. I remembered Rhonda talking about this in class. Contractions were very close together and I was in quite a bit of pain. I remember thinking that despite being in a lot of pain-I knew what my body was doing. Very soon after I could feel My body taking over. I started to involuntarily push, and sure enough I was 10cms. A short while into pushing before I felt I could even get ‘the hang of it’ the team lost the babies heart rate on the monitor and decided to quickly remove him with the aide of the vacuum. Kiptyn came out crying and we were so relieved as the last few minutes of labor seemed like complete chaos.
I think labor was a total of 6 hours or so. It seemed to go fast. The following day we left the hospital and had numerous compliments from staff-they couldn’t believe the teamwork between my husband and I and that we ‘stuck to our guns’ about how we wanted our delivery to go. We were thankful for the skills and knowledge of the healthcare team and also felt that we could be active participants in our delivery. Thank you healthy birth choices for the knowledge and confidence to navigate birth,delivery, and the glorious ups and downs of the following days. 🙂
Kari & Nathan
