Birthstory for all you birthstory junkies.

More pics: http://www.geocities.com/amleko/Jonah.html

Minus the 45 minutes of pitocin induced labor that I had, it was my easiest and least complicated birth. I started having contractions on Thursday night, they were pretty strong and close enough to wake me up every 15 minutes but they just would not pick up a regular rythem. I went all day Friday and Friday night like this, strong contractions but not close enough to be "labor". We showed up at the hospital 8:00 a.m and it took about an hour to get things ready, including two failed iv attempts (ouch!) before they finally called iv therapy. My doctor came in and checked me and found that I was 3 cm, 80 percent effaced and the baby had moved down even further since my appointment. So we started the pitocin at around 9:07. Forty minutes later I was asking her to shut off the pitocin, it was so intense and the contractions seemed to last forever. 8 minutes later she did shut it off because Jonah was not handling them well judging by his heartbeat. Finally, I got my epidural and my doctor checked me again and found I was 8 cm already! So in 48 minutes I went from 3 to 8. With my epidural now, I was totally comfortable and just relaxed for the next couple hours while I finished dilating and "laboring down" (fully dilated, but not pushing to just allow the baby to move down). A little after noon I started to push and was quickly dismayed to find that he was not coming any easier than his brothers. After and hour plus of pushing they got out the forceps (which I didn't even know about at the time). However, my wonderful nurse saved the day. She put up a bar and wraped a sheet around it and had me pull on the sheet while I pushed. For some reason that did the trick and he really started moving and out he came soon after. I was surprised at how small he was, I really expecting much bigger. I was also surprised at all the dark hair he has! So anyways, just 4.5 hours start to finish!