Part 3: Labor 7am-11:40pm

7:30am- a little before 7:30 we all started to stir- We are going to have a baby today!! Ashley arrived, took photos of our card game, and knitted. We listened to a play-list I had created, and my sweetie ate some of the snacks I had packed earlier. Joy and Mely arrived.

 

9:00am- Dr. Jerry Hancock came in to check on my progress. He noted that my water hadn't completely broken so he took the “crochet hook” ( as my sweetie calls it ) and popped the sack of water. He LEPT off the bed as the fluid came rushing out- it was meconium stained- which means that Pheebs had gone potty inside me, and it could be potentially dangerous if she ingested it. Just another thing to worry about! He actually had to “pop” me twice. “Did her water really break last night?” nurse- “yes, we checked the fluid and it was amniotic fluid” Apparently, what happened was one of the four “pockets” of water inside had begun to leak the night before, but the majority of the sack was still intact, making it so the baby's head wasn't applying pressure to the cervix and I wasn't dilating quickly enough. Alright this should make things progress!

I was dilating about 2 cm every hour and a half – after the doctor broke my water it went a little faster but still not quickly enough.

11am- they gave me pitosin to help induce labor more. They were concerned with my fever and the dangerous infection that Phoebe could get from it.

 
 11:30- The nurse came in to start prepping the room.

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This whole time- since about the middle of the night I felt super hot and was super thirsty the whole time. I had a fever so they kept a cool cloth on my head and it felt like I couldn't drink enough ice water. After asking the doctor later about the fever, he said I got it probably from the combination of a long labor and from having the strep B virus.

11:40am- I knew things were progressing from the way I was feeling. Hard labor was about to begin!!