Sorry it's been awhile, but hey, I have a newborn. (I don't even know if anyone reads this besides me, but at least it'll be written down for posterity).
So, I got the Pitocin. For about two hours, I labored on my own. My contractions were barely noticeable. I was having some bad back labor, so they brought in a birthing ball and I used that. They also brought me a heating pad to use. After two hours of labor, my water broke and that is when the pain got very intense.
I fought through the pain for two hours, but it was all I could stand. I'd been awake for over 30 hours by that point and had barely eaten anything, and my strength to fight the pain was just not there anymore. My parents were in the room visiting us for a little while, but I finally had to ask them to leave because I didn't want them to know how much pain I was really in. We called the nurse in to check me, and I was at 3 cm. At that point, I felt like a failure to be asking for pain relief already, but I knew that if I kept going on my own, I would have absolutely no strength left for the delivery. Remember, my doctor had told me that I could be laboring into the next day, and it was only the afternoon. I was rocking back and forth on the bed in a cold sweat, having the hubs wipe me down with a cold cloth. I could not breathe or speak through the contractions. When they call Pitocin the devil drug, they ain't lyin'. I was doing fantastic before my water broke--I completely believe I could have made it much longer without an epidural, and maybe not needed one at all. But after my water broke, the Pitocin really kicked in and I was having contraction after contraction with no relief.
The nurse said she hated to give me an epidural at only 3 cm, and I really wanted to wait longer anyway, so she suggested an analgesic in my IV as an alternative. She said that it would make me a little loopy, but it should help alleviate the pain and at least let me progress a little before I got an epidural.
That was a big, giant mistake. As soon as the analgesic was in my IV, I began to feel incredibly tired. I was tired anyway, so this brought me to the point of sheer exhaustion. I was in constant pain, but in between contractions (literally less than 30 seconds), the pain died down to a dull roar instead of a screaming pain, and in those few seconds I would start to fall asleep sitting up. Then, when the next contraction hit, it would wake me back up and I would literally have no energy left in my body at all to do my breathing or anything to help. After maybe 30 minutes, I called the nurse back in and begged her for the epidural. She looked at my chart and saw that I was having contraction on top of contraction, and agreed.
By the time they gave me the epidural, I was so exhausted that it took two people to hold me up just so the anesthesiologist could give me the epidural. I am a little foggy during that point, because I was both exhausted and in incredible pain. After about 15 minutes, the epidural kicked in and I began to relax. I was never able to fall asleep, but I was able to lie down and rest on and off for about two hours.
During that time, about half an hour after they put in the epidural, one of the nurses came in to do a progress check. She goes, "Of course...." and I thought she was going to tell me that I hadn't made any progress.
Wrong. I was fully dilated. I had gone from 3 cm to 10 cm in no more than an hour and a half. No wonder I was in such incredible pain.
Even though I was fully dilated, the baby was still quite high (station -2), so I knew I wouldn't be pushing for awhile. They gave me time to rest, then they had me sit up in the bed so that gravity could start moving Baby downward.
My doctor arrived around 5:30, and they began to prep the room for delivery.
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