Ok, so we were sent off to walk the halls, which we did (together, alone, and at the end, just me wandering around the educational wing of the third floor) for upwards of eight hours. At first we were told to return every two hours to lie on the bed for a test strip of fetal monitoring to get completed, but after two or three of those strips (all of which showed no contractions at all) the nurses agreed to just hold a fetal monitor against my belly while I stood beside the machine, listen to the baby's heart rate, and send me on my way.
Finally, around four thirty in the afternoon we went to the cafeteria for supper and I felt what I thought *might* be a contraction. I wasn't sure. My first labour was pretty much a long string of interventions and pain medications, so I didn't know if those contractions (what I could remember of them) were anything like what I was experiencing with this birth. I did know that they felt nothing at all like Braxton Hicks, but they did seem to 'swell' a bit, sort of peak and then die down. I hummed through them, waiting for them to get more frequent or something.
They never did. For about five hours David and I hummed through the 'easiest ever' contractions. They were like mild period pains. Maybe a gas pain. Nothing unmanageable at all. Sometime between eight and nine at night I sat on the birthing ball to watch The Royal Tenenbaums (by this point we had been given the good news that we could stay at the hospital) and the *contractions* got a bit more intense. Still very manageable, but more intense. At this point I kind of still thought maybe they really were just cramps, or maybe something I ate, because they didn't seem to be what I imagined a contraction would feel like.
I went to sit in the shower, which was nice but somewhat unnecessary. And then I got out of the shower and they got worse. Really worse. The nurse had previously explained to me that any pain medication could only be administered after an internal exam, but I remembered my success with morphine in the early stages of labour with Samuel, and so I asked for that.
It must have been between 9pm-10pm by this point, and I was checked and told that I was still 3cm, as I had been since I was admitted up to 14 hours ago, but that I had effaced to about 80%. They gave me a shot of morphine and I tried to manage the contractions with that, but for some reason it wasn't working this time. The nurse on call at this point suggested the shower again and back I went. The pain was too strong for the shower, but the morphine allowed me to sleep in between the painful parts and I must have stayed under the hot water for about an hour.
When I got out of the shower the pain was coming constantly and the contractions were almost on top of each other. I told the nurse that the morphine wasn't working and that I was going to need 'something else'. She suggested Fentanyl, but explained that I would have to get an IV put in to take a dose. David and I had a mini-conference and decided we would take an epidural instead. I didn't really want one, but the pain was incredibly intense by this point and I felt like I just needed. it. to. stop. I couldn't catch my breath and I was still uncertain if these were even contractions since they didn't seem to be doing anything to dilate me. Following procedure I had another exam, and was told that I was 100% effaced now, but still, despite the constant, rolling, awful pain, still only 3cm dilated.
I couldn't understand why the pain was so incredibly bad. I was only 3cm? I had been 3cm for 15 hours or so now, at least six of which I had experienced contractions for. Why wasn't I dilating?
No comments:
Post a Comment