our birth story

our birth story ended up being pretty different than what i'd anticipated and/or wanted, but it's ours and that makes it perfect.  i took notes throughout the day, so i'm just basically going to relay them to you as i wrote them.  i'll throw in any afterthoughts in italics.

-wednesday morning, i lost my mucus plug.  and wednesday afternoon, i started having irregular contractions.  right around 7pm, they had become more regular - about 7 minutes apart.
-called l&d triage at 9pm, as instructed.  was told an rn would call me back.  rn called back around 9:30 and told us to come to triage at 10:30.  we laid around the house a bit more, enjoying our last few minutes together, then packed up the car and headed over to the hospital.
-check in at 10:45 (nurse patty)
-placed on monitors and cervical check - still 1cm, 50% effaced.  baby's heart rate is "beautiful."
-got iv for fluids.  took 3 tries (ended up in left hand)
-11:30pm - baby's heart rate dropped.  i got o2.  4rns and the ob came in.  had me flip side to side, then on all 4s.  baby's heart rate finally came back to baseline (120s).
-12am - transferred to l&d.  checked in with new rn (rosie)
tried to sleep - too nervous, too many contractions, too much noise, what have you
-1:30am - ob (dr. piccone) explained that i am contracting quite a bit already, and with the baby's heart rate drop earlier, they decided to skip the cytotec and go straight to low dose pitocin.
-2am - started on low dose pitocin to ripen cervix.  told it will be 1mg for an hour, then 2mg for hour, then up to 4mg, where it'll stay for a while.  definitely feeling contractions but they aren't painful.  just tightening of belly and down in groin.
-4:30am - 4mg pitocin.  cervical check - still 1cm, 50%, -1 station.  contractions are stronger and becoming painful.  when lying on back, hurts in ribcage.
-7am - new rns (sandi and katrina)
-11:30am - contractions about 2-2 1/2 minutes apart.  matt and i start talking about getting an epidural.  i was managing the pain fine, but was so tired and felt i needed to rest in order to have the strength to push when the time came.  we decided that if i haven't dilated, i will probably get one just so that i can rest.
-12pm - cervical check - 2cm, 90%, -1 station.  discussed options - break water and hope to move things along, or epidural.  chose the epidural.
-12:30pm - epidural placed.  can't feel contractions (yay!).  bp issues - flipped sides, increased iv fluids, placed on o2.
-1-3pm - slept!  once they regulated my blood pressure, i could hardly keep my eyes open.  the nurse was talking to me and i could barely pay attention.
-3:30pm - straight cath
-4:30pm - discussed possibility of foley bulb to dilate.  cervical check - 2-3cm, 90%, -1 station.  foley bulb would not be appropriate - it falls out at 3cm.  o2 off.
-5:30pm - felt a lot of wetness.  thought maybe water broke.  more bp issues - flipped sides, iv fluids, placed on o2. 
-7:15pm - straight cath.  new rn (laura).
somewhere around this time is when i noticed that my epidural catheter at fallen out.  i notified the nurse.  she went to talk to her supervisor, then came back and said they were going to call anesthesia to come back to check because they'd never seen this happen.  of course!  anesthesia came up and replaced the catheter, but it did not seem to take.  i pushed the button several times but nothing really happened.  was feeling pretty much everything at this point.
-8:15pm - dr. klemens checked.  4cm, 90%, -1 station.  manually broke water bag.
-9pm - 7cm.  feeling intense pressure and need to push.  started to push.
-11:46pm - delivery!  dr. klemens used the vacuum to assist.  he got stuck in between contractions (i thought i was going to split open - it was so painful.  i wanted to keep pushing but dr. klemens told me to wait - continuing to push would have been useless and just made me too exhausted and potentially cause a really bad tear).  one more contraction, and he was out.  he wasn't breathing when he came out.  treated in the in-suite nicu setup by nicu team.  given o2 and started breathing on his own after about a minute.  once i was stitched up and he was stabilized, they brought him over for a brief snuggle before taking him to the nursery to monitor for 4 hours.
-2am - transferred to maternity.  daxon stayed in nursery overnight until about 6am.