Around 6 that evening I started having contractions. I tried to just ignore them, but when I was still having them four hours later and they were getting more and more painful I decided to time them. I was having them 3-4 minutes apart and at least a minute in length, so we called the nurses and we decided we should go up. I couldn't walk or talk through them, but I was breathing good through them and I was feeling pretty confident.
Well, we got up there, and I wasn't dilated anymore, and after 3 hours of walking, I still wasn't, so they offered me the choice of staying or going home. I decided to go home, and I took 25 mg. of Benadryl and tried to get some sleep, which I managed to get about four hours of. But sleeping did cause them to slow down to about 10 minutes apart until about 1 pm the next day (when I was taking a final exam for one of my classes-the last exam of the year!), at which they went right back up to where they were the night before.
Around 5 that night (almost 24 hours of nonstop contractions that never were less then 10 minutes apart), I realized I couldn't remember the last time I felt the baby move. So I laid down for an hour and did a kick count and didn't get any movements. I tried not to panic, but immediately called my doctor, who told me to come in. She said it was the busiest day the hospital had seen in over a year, so she cleared out her bed in the doctor's lounge and hooked me up to a fetal monitor there, because all the other rooms were full. Right away we heard his heartbeat. Talk about relief!!
She kept me on the monitor for an hour, which was picking up my contractions as well, and she came in and said that although he seemed fine now, he was showing signs of stress and there was enough question that since I was full term (this was June 9th and my due date was June 10th) that she thought it would be best to go ahead and induce labor. My This was fine with me, so my husband went down and got the suitcase from the car while they got me a room.
They started a Pitocin drip at around 9 pm, which increased the pain level and intensity of the contractions, but it was NOTHING like the horror stories I had heard about. I got in the Jacuzzi tub and just laid there and did deep breathing, while my husband gave me sips of water and encouraged me during the contractions. They kept having me move around, because the baby's heartrate would originally dip, but other then that it was doing ok. I was starting to get a little exhausted, since I had only slept four hours since Friday, and my doctor came in and said she'd check me, and if I hadn't progressed, she was going to break my water. I got out, and decided that if I had progressed, I was going to keep going without meds, but if not, I was getting an epidural so I could sleep. I had wanted to go natural, but all I really wanted was a healthy baby, and I knew there were unexpected things in birth, so I just figured this was one of them.
