Kennedy turns two month old this week and I just realized I haven’t taken the time to write out the story of Kennedy’s birth! The whole process was really long (over 33 hours of labor!) so I’ll do my best to summarize the highlights.
Initially, we were supposed to go into the hospital Tuesday night (Nov 16th) to start the induction process. About 30 minutes before we left our house to head to the hospital, we got a phone call saying that they were needing to reschedule us for Wednesday. They didn’t really give us a time, they just said we’ll give you a call and let you know when to come in on Wednesday and so that was kind of the beginning of this whole rollercoaster. That night I was a little grumpy because I was so excited to meet our little girl and was bummed we’d have to wait an extra day.
We ended up getting to the hospital around noon on Wednesday (Nov 17th) and started the first dose of the induction medication around 2:00 PM. When you are in labor, you need to go from 0 centimeters to 10 centimeters before you are able to push and actually give birth. When we first got there, they checked where I was and I was at 0 centimeters. I’m not going to go into a ton of detail of the process because I’m not a doctor and I don’t know a ton of the technical specifics, but basically the first stage in my induction process was medication. This particular medication can be given to you up to three times over a twelve hour period. I got the second dose of the medication 4 hours after the first dose and was checked again for my progress. I was still at 0 centimeters and was a little bummed at my lack of progress. During this check, they noticed that baby’s heart rate was a little high and said we’d need to keep an eye on that as things continued.
At 10:00 PM Wednesday night, I had my third progress check. Her heart rate ended up coming down a little bit, so that was good news. During this third check and after 2/3 doses of the medication, I was only half a centimeter dilated. So all of that work to go half a centimeter, I was frustrated to say the least. At this point, we ended up switching plans and we went with another method for the rest of my induction. They warned me that it would be pretty painful and recommended that if I was planning on getting an epidural, to get it before we started. So a little before midnight, I got my epidural. There wasn’t any pain with the epidural, but I did have a ton of anxiety which made it awful. I was physically shaking so much that the nurses were holding me down. They just kept telling me not to move and to stay still, which of course stressed me out even more because I didn’t want to mess anything up.
Around 4AM, the nurses came in and checked to see how my body had responded so far and I had moved up to 4 centimeters. So, a ton of progress compared to everything else that had happened so far. Yay! About an hour later, around 5:00 AM Thursday morning, they were determining if they wanted to break my water or not and it ended up breaking on its own right then. At this point they warned me that things were going to start moving quickly now and that usually the second half of labor goes a lot faster than the first.
Around 11:00 AM, the nurses started having me move into different positions and try different exercises to keep my progress going. It was so incredibly grueling on my body because I had limited strength. By the time that we were done, I had been moving positions for four hours and I was so wiped out. They checked my progress and I was at 7 centimeters. At this point, the doctors were really confused as to why it was taking me so long to get to 10 centimeters. They gave me an ultrasound to check on baby and make sure her positioning was ok. She was head down (the ideal position for birth) but her body was coming down at an angle and her head was turned in the wrong direction which is what they thought could be causing my problems. I was super frustrated because I felt like it had taken so much work to get to this point and I was running out of energy.
At this point we started talking about whether or not I should have a C-section. I was so scared about having a C-section because I didn’t know anything about them. It had never been my plan to go that route, so I didn’t do any research as to what that process would look like. But after over 30 hours of labor, the doctors weren’t sure if I’d have then energy to go through with a normal labor. Plus, the ultrasound showed us that a normal labor would not be easy because she was in a weird position. Due to all of these factors, we opted for the c-section and they started prepping me right away.
As they started prepping me, they noticed I had a fever of 103 and that baby’s heart rate was climbing. They immediately did some tests. They told me that after my water broke that morning, I had developed an infection that had potentially spread to my baby. So just as we’re about to go back for the C-section, they tell us that as soon as our baby is born she’s going to be taken to the NICU. This was kind of my breaking point. I had been in labor for 33 hours and was about to have an unplanned C-section and now the nurses are telling me I wouldn’t even be able to spend the night with my baby.
Once they brought me to the operating room, I kind of had an anxiety attack and started shaking uncontrollably and throwing up. The whole thing was such a blur, but she ended up being born at 10:50PM Thursday November 18th. I kept trying to calm down but my muscles were tightening up more and more. I started having spasms around my neck and shoulders and was in an unbearable amount of pain. It was so bad that once Kennedy was born and they handed her to me, I couldn’t even open my eyes to look at her or wrap my arms around her. The nurses ended up giving her to Matt for a few minutes and took some photos of him and her together. This was probably the hardest part of the entire day because I felt like I had been through so much. I knew I only had a few minutes with my daughter before she was taken to the NICU and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was in so much pain. After they took Kennedy away, they took me to a recovery room and it took me quite a bit of time to just come back down from that and to relax.
Once we were finally taken to our room, it was a little after 2AM Friday morning. Before going to sleep, we were able to stop by the NICU and see Kennedy for about 10 minutes or so. I was so exhausted though, so we couldn’t stay much longer than that. The next day, the doctors who did my C-section came in and told me that Kennedy had been in such an odd angle that there was no way I would have been able to deliver her naturally. This info gave me so much relief that we made the right decision in opting for the C-section. Kennedy ended up spending about a day and a half in the NICU and was given a lot of tests to see if she had an infection or not. Once the doctors determined that my infection had not spread to her, she was released to our room for the rest of our stay. My whole delivery process was a rollercoaster of emotions and one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. But, at the end of the day it was all worth it to meet my baby girl.
