It all started two weeks before my due date. I was having a hard time going to sleep because of Braxton hicks contractions, So I pulled out my phone and started to play with a contraction counter to make sure it fit all of my needs. It was then I realized my Braxton hicks where 15 minutes apart for over an hour. I woke up my husband and told him what was going on and asked if he could count my contractions for a little bit. By then they were 10 minutes apart and were starting to hurt. So I ran to my daughters room and told her we needed to go to the hospital. We got to the hospital around 2:30am. They got me into a room so they could monitor my contractions and ask me questions. Sure enough the doctor said it looked like I was in labor, and wanted to keep me there as things progressed. 6 hours later my contractions were still about 10 minutes apart but no longer hurt as much. They told me I was in labor but I should go home until my labor progressed more.
At first I was happy for this news. So over the next couple of weeks I labored and waited. I got my maternity pictures taken, and I took advantage of this time to do that and to get all the last minute items for baby. I stayed in labor only dilated to 2 cm, my labor did not progress and my due date passed.
After my due date my doctor wanted me to start getting a NST every couple of days and to get another ultrasound to see how big the baby was. The ultrasound showed the baby at over 10 lbs, and the doctors got scared. They basically told us our only choices were either C-Section or Induction at this point as waiting longer would be an unnecessary risk to me and my baby. I told them I wanted to labor as naturally as possible definitely avoiding a C-Section and Pitocin and requested they try to get things going by some other means. The attending gave a vaginal birth a 70% chance of failure given the baby's size but agreed to let me try, as if appeasing a child. I was horrified. I had spent weeks working on my all-natural birth plan, and now they were trying to convince me they were going to have to cut open my stomach to bring my baby into this world.
We spent a few hours of haggling with doctors until they agreed to break my waters, but they didn't feel comfortable doing this until I dilated a little further. So they started me on Cervidil (a cervix softener) to encourage dilation. Baby's station was still high enough they were afraid of the umbilical chord coming through first if they broke my water. At this point they had me on monitoring and decided my labor was strong enough there was a possibility the Cervidil would tip labor over the edge. These were the same labor conditions I had been in for over 2 weeks. The Cervidil got contractions going very strong over night but then once it came out they returned to the same place they'd been. So after about 18 hours of no further dilation and plateaued contractions they "needled" my water. This really got things going, and the way they explained it to me was basically that because of the diabetes I had "too much fluid" and it was preventing my uterus from contracting hard enough to make labor progress. It's likely I had been attempting to labor for over 2 weeks but because the uterus was so "full" I was unable to make any progress because I couldn't contract far enough. By needling my waters they allowed some of the pressure to release and baby began to descend immediately and contractions got very strong very fast.
The doctors stayed out of my way for a while after this. My loving husband helped me through my labor. We used the techniques we had learned from our Bradley methods classes. I couldn't have asked for a better partner in this. We were a real team. I was very restless, going from the tub to the yoga ball to just walking around the halls. My husband with drinking water in hand every step of the way.
Once I moved into transition, things got very interesting, between the diabetes running the placenta too hard and baby's larger size the baby's heart rate began dipping dangerously low during contractions and this made the doctors very nervous. They ended up putting me on Oxygen to assure the baby was getting enough. My transition lasted a painful 2 hours, I was told later it was actually kind of ironic at one point, the doctor turned and looked at my husband and said "If she doesn't get the urge to push in the next 2-3 contractions we're going to have to talk about a Cesarean, he's only got so much reserve and we can't seem to keep his heart rate up high enough" and literally the moment she finished her sentence I began pushing! I had really bad back labor and my cervix was stuck at 9.5 cm. One of the doctors was manually helping me get the last .5 cm of dilation during contractions. I was passing out in between contractions, and even ended up vomiting. After 30 minutes of pushing they gave me an episiotomy (my choices at that point were either episiotomy or Cesarean).
Things got really scary at the end though because we had a genuine Shoulder Dystocia, after the baby's head came free the shoulders became stuck behind my pelvis, but they managed to take my knees all the way up to my shoulders to open my pelvis and rotate the baby through! Because of the baby getting stuck the pediatricians immediately moved him to the other side of the room (with my husband following) as they needed to check for nerve damage and they wanted to measure breathing and examine oxidation levels so unfortunately our third stage birth plan kind of went out the window, but after they were satisfied the baby was in good health they immediately brought him to back to me for skin-to-skin and let us be for a few hours before the routine measurements.
At the end of labor there were literally 20 PhD's in the room and our 9 pounds 9 ounce "toddler sized baby" Baby Boy! I wish we had gotten a better labor, something a little closer to our birth plan, but I'm glad things turned out as well as they did. There was a distinct sigh of relief in the room when he came out. I am glad I didn't get any pain killers the doctors told me that if I had used an epidural we may not have succeeded in the vaginal birth.
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