Part 3 - Labor Day - January 12, 2008

The next few hours are a blur. The family arrived. Mom and Patra first – Patra got a ticket driving too fast to get mom to the hospital. Dad rode with Larry and Debbie, and Melissa and Aunt Pam were the last to arrive, but everyone made it in plenty of time. After my epidural, my progress slowed, so they gave me pitocin to help get things going again. Things moved along at a normal pace for several hours. About the time they expected me to be ready the Doctor came in to check my progress. Dr Sweeney was not on call that weekend, so my doctor was Dr. Kish. I had never met her before, but I liked her immediately. Around 6:00 she estimated we’d be ready to push by 7:00 pm. At 7:00, she said we were still not “fully” dilated…I had a crescent moon of cervix left on one side, but she said we could try and push through that side. We gave it a couple of pushes and she said it was not letting Alice’s head pass, and since she was in no distress, we could give it one more hour to finish dilating and try again at 8:00 pm…if there was no cervix change in 1 hour, we should consider a c-section. I passed the hour mostly with my eyes closed concentrating on the pressure Alice was putting on my cervix, hoping she was dropping further and helping the dilation to finish. Family was in and out of the room, which was a welcome distraction to listen to, although by this time, my participation level had dropped. Larry stood by my side for most of this hour and held my hand, which was a real comfort. He did a great job of keeping the visitor level to a manageable number. By this hour, it was mostly women in the room….I think my mom, my sister and Larry’s mom.
The doctor came back in at 8:00 to take a look, and we were disappointed to find out that there had been no further progress. The frustrating part was that I had just spent an hour in discomfort for nothing. The scary part was that she now recommended a c-section. We didn’t really need any discussion. We both wanted her out and I was exhausted from 14 hours of labor.