Abigail Worthington Wheaton: A Birth Story, part 1

Warning, this is LONG...and it's only half of it. 

As a blog reader, I've always enjoyed reading the birth stories of the women whose daily lives I follow. Even before becoming a mother, I loved it. Now as a mother, each one brings me to tears. Every story is different, but beautiful & precious.

If you aren't one of those people that thinks these stories are amazing, time to go back to online shopping! :) I'm not sharing this for any reason other than I know I'm going to forget pieces of it, and because as a soon to be mom, I read every story I could so I'd know what to expect.

So some back information. I was extremely lucky & had a fantastic pregnancy. I felt great, my hair did the right things, and I wasn't gaining crazy amounts of weight. But, I had gestational diabetes. To keep that in check, you must follow a very strict diet with reduced carbs & sweets. And let me tell you, all I wanted to do was eat bread & popsicles so I struggled. 

Because of my diabetes I had 2 ultrasounds that aren't typically done to monitor growth. As a general rule, moms with GD have larger babies. These ultrasounds were to make sure that Abigail had not gotten over the magical number of 9lbs. At our 37 week ultrasound to monitor growth, she weighed just over 5lbs and I was already having contractions. All good things!!

After that, things sort of stalled for us. I was still having contractions but they weren't increasing, I wasn't progressing either, & Abby had quit growing. So at my 38 week appointment we decided to induce. I wasn't happy about it, but I was just SO ready for her to be here that I was OK with it.

Fast-forward to Thursday, December 3rd. We check into the hospital about 530 that afternoon to start the induction. Even though I had been having contractions for weeks, I had not actually started "active" labor. As my doctor said, my cervix wasn't "ripe". Add that to the list of things I didn't think I'd ever hear said to me (or that I ever thought I'd type for the public to read). So starting about 630pm I took my first pill to get things moving, and then the shift change happened. I'm not sure if someone dropped the ball, or if my nurse really believed it, but they didn't give me another pill at 10pm like they should have because my body was progressing normally. YAY! But, alas, it was not. So when they gave me my next pill at 2am, it was like starting ALL OVER. I was still only dilated at 2cm...which is pretty much what I was at when I arrived at the hospital 8 hours earlier.

The pill at 2am started my contractions back up and they became more steady. We did this same exact thing for the next 12 hrs. Not kidding. We moved to labor & deliver, walked the halls, played cards, visited with people...anything I could do within about 50 feet of the room, I did. But nothing happened. 

My doctor got to the hospital about 2 that afternoon & came in to see me. And ya'll, let me tell you. If you don't have a doctor, or don't have one you like, I've got the lady for you. I literally had a meltdown the weekend before Abby was born because I was afraid I was going to go into labor & that Dr. Drake wasn't going to be the one who delivered her...but all that was for nothing! :)

When she came in to check, she went ahead & broke my water and our hope was that things would start moving, but really all that happened was that things started hurting, mainly because we had also started pitocin. Up to this point I had been laboring with essentially no pain. I had hoped to go through the birth process without an epidural, not for any "I am woman hear me roar" reason, but because I have very strange reactions to pain meds, and my husband soon found out. 

Because I was in pain & didn't want the epidural, my only option was morphine. Sure, why not? Pretty much what it did was knock me out, but kept my eyes open. Andrew said it was the scariest thing of the entire process. So yeah, no more morphine for me. AND on top of all of that, I didn't progress AT ALL. I'm not kidding...not one single inch, and I wasn't feeling fantastic.

So after talking with Dr. Drake & Andrew we decided to go for the epidural to see if it would make things happen. I wasn't opposed to a C-section, but I really wanted things to work naturally. So at 5pm the best anesthesiologist team came in, gave me the epidural & were out in about 30 minutes, which was amazing. They made us laugh (not during the procedure) and kept us distracted. That procedure couldn't have gone better, which was great since I didn't want to have it to begin with anyway. 

Ok, I'll have part 2 either tomorrow or Wednesday! 

Big love!