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Quick background: I had been having contractions during the night for a few nights previous to Tuesday night, but they would stick around for an hour or so and then leave or space out to 2-3 an hour for the rest of the night. I also had been concerned because her movements dropped drastically over the weekend. We went in to be monitored on Monday and her heart rate was steady but not reactive, so they did a BPP u/s and saw that she had borderline fluid levels at 7. The attending declared them "adequate" and sent me home to follow up at my scheduled appt Wednesday afternoon.

On baby day--Wednesday August 18:

Contractions started again around 2 am and were coming around every 10-15 minutes for a few hours. At around 5 am, they started coming every 5-7 minutes and getting stronger. I waited until DH's alarm went off for work at 6 to let him know what as going on (I didn't want to wake him up for a false alarm). He took a shower and I told him if they stayed 5 minutes apart until 6:30, I'd call the office. About 6:45, I called my mom (since she was going to be the one watching the kids and I wanted to catch her before she left for work) and then called the answering service for my office. The midwife on-call gave us a call back and told us to go ahead and head into the hospital.

We got to the hospital around 7am and went to OB triage. They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me. I was at a 4 (about 1-1.5 cm more than the week before) and her heart rate was still not having the variables and accelerations that they wanted to see. Also, she was having some decelerations with the contractions. She recovered quickly, but that along with the fact that she had borderline concerning fluids on Monday made them a bit more concerning. The triage nurse talked to the midwife on call and they both agreed it would be best for her to go ahead and get her delivered that day. I was definitely on board with that idea, since I still wasn't feeling her move much at all and was planning on discussing the possibility of an induction at my appt that afternoon anyway.

DH ended up coming back to triage around 8:30 and walked in right as they were taking me to the L&D room. (He had to stay out in the waiting room with the kids until my mom showed up and my mom missed her exit...of course!). They hooked me up to the monitors in there and got my IV and antibiotics running (since I was GBS+). My contractions were still about 5 minutes apart but weren't getting much stronger.

Since she was continuing to have the decels, they decided to start some pitoccin to get the contractions into a better pattern so that I could progress faster. As soon as I knew the plan was to have a speedy labor with pitocin, I knew I wanted an epidural to make sure my body was relaxed and dilating as efficiently as possible. I'm glad I did because, even with the epidural, the contractions towards the end were strong enough to have to breathe through.

The midwife wanted internal monitors so that I could move around and sit up while still keeping a continuous reading on her heart rate, so she broke my water. She had trouble even hooking the sac and when she was finally able to get it, she said that there was barely a trickle that came out--yet another confirmation that we were doing the right thing in getting her out before something could happen to the cord.

At around noon, I was 6 cm dilated and 90% effaced. The antibiotics were done around 1pm, so we were aiming to have me ready to push shortly after that. The midwife knew that the baby wasn't going to tolerate pushing very well, so she said she wanted to make sure that the pitocin was doing most of the work and that she was low before we even started pushing. By a little after one, I was fully dilated and completely effaced.

The rest went pretty fast. After about 4 contractions and 12 minutes of pushing, Elizabeth Anne was born at 1:33pm at 7 lbs 4.5 oz and 20 inches long (the nurses told us we should go get a lottery ticket and play the threes--in their records, she was my 3rd baby, born at 13:33, and weighed 3303 grams LOL ) .

She had a couple of scary moments during the delivery where her heart rate dropped low and didn't come back up until the midwife reached in and rubbed her head. When she was born, we found out why. She had the cord wrapped once around her neck and three times around her body. No wonder she wasn't moving much, she'd swaddled herself in her cord! She also had her arm up around her throat and basically delivered the same time as her head. (Which I'm convinced is the reason that she was later than my others and why the labor wasn't progressing well on it's own--she had no way to drop all the way down and really get good pressure on my cervix).

I'm so grateful that the midwife was aggressive with her decisions. I'm sure some could have sent me home to wait until my labor picked up on my own and I don't want to think what could have happened then.

We came home on Friday and she is a pooping machine and was nursing like a champ. My milk came in late yesterday, though, so now we're fighting through the ever so wonderful engorgement phase. I just keep telling myself it will all get better in a day or two.