Air Force Wife ~ Country Mommy: Daniel's Birth Story

**30 weeks pregnant with Daniel**

Saturday, May 29:
Jonathan and I ended up leaving for the hospital around 3:30 a.m. because I had been having lots of contractions. Once we got to the hospital at around 5:00 a.m. the contractions pretty much stopped but they wanted to put me on the monitor anyway. They kind of came back but was nothing major. My blood pressure was really high again so my doctor decided to induce me because I was term and wanted to make sure that I didn't end up waiting and getting preeclampsia later on.
At 12:45 that afternoon I got my first dose of cervadil and around 2:00 contractions really started to pick up. I was put on the monitor to check contrations and Daniel's heartbeat every hour and walked to help the contractions in between. The contractions kept getting worse and close together so I was getting hopefull that the cervadil was working but wouldn't be able to know until 12:45 that night when they took it out.

Sunday, May 30:
At 12:45 they came and took cervadil out and the only change in my cervix was that I went from 50 - 60% effaced but was still only dilated to a 2. Since I had no change they put in another dose of cervadil at 1:40 and said they would do the whole process over again until 1:40 that afternoon. I said I wanted some sleep medicine and may end up wanting pain meds to help me sleep because contractions were so strong. I ended up getting ambien and then a couple hours later a shot of pain meds that made me all sorts of loopy lol.

      I woke up around 5:00 and ate some breakfast. I suddenly had horrible contractions soon after eating and ended up throwing up all I had eaten. A nurse came in to check me since I was in so much pain and told me I was dilated to a 5. She got me started on fluids to get ready for an epidural and gave me another shot of pain meds. Around 9 or so the pain meds were completely worn off and I was in even more pain than before. I could barely walk and was trying so hard not to scream it had gotten so bad.

     About 30min later the anesthesiologist came. I felt so bad for him because I was rocking back and forth through the pain and he was doing all he could while I was rocking so I wouldn't have to hold still quite so long. Once he got it in, it only took about 5min or so for me to be almost completely pain free. My doctor came to check me at that time and I was ilated to an 8. About 30 min later Jon said he was going to go get some lunch and I told him to tell my doc I had pushed my "more epidural" button twice and I could still feel a big amout of pressure in my hip bones and lower back.
Within a few seconds he came back to the room with the doc and she decided to check me. I was completely dilated and effaced and he was right there so we decided to start pushing. An hour later at 12:11 Daniel was born.

    Whenever he was born he sucked in fluid so he had to be taken to the warmer pretty quick and have it sucked out. But once they did that he was just fine and came and laid on my chest for about an hour and a half before they started weighing him and all that stuff. He weighed in at 8lbs 6oz and was 20in long. He took to breast feeding so quickly it had all of the nurses shocked and has been doing wonderful with it since. He is so content to just lay there and look around or just lay there and sleep on you. I couldn't be anymore happy or proud. Seeing Jon with him somehow made me fall in love with him all over again.