Active Labor

Active Labor:

By the time we got to the hospital (it takes about 45 minutes to get to the hospital from our house) I was soaked. Justin ran in to get me a wheel chair because at this point my contractions were now 5 minutes apart and were starting to get a bit more intense. So he wheeled me up to the birthing center and I was admitted. They didn't have any empty rooms when we got there so they put us in an over flow room. I was roomed with another girl who was scheduled to have a C-Section at noon but the genius didn't show up until noon and had eaten lunch before she came. (You are supposed to show up 2 hours before your scheduled c-section and not eat anything. She wasn't the smartest cookie in the cookie jar.) Since she ate before she came she wasn't able to have her C-Section until 5:00 because she had to digest her lunch. So, they kept us in that fun little room until about 3:00 pm. We had to wait for a room to open up for me. Finally we were moved to an actual room and my doctor examined me and I was only dilated to a one. My contractions started to come even faster and harder. I wanted to try to go as long as I could with out any pain meds. After about an hour I was ready for some medication. I asked for the epidural but my nurse told me I couldn't have it yet because I wasn't dilated enough. About another hour passed and I was wanting the epidural again the nurse examined me and I was at a 3. She told me I couldn't have the epidural until I was at least dilated to a 4 but she offered me some IV meds. I graciously accepted the IV meds. At this point, I didn't care what they gave me just as long as I could have something to make the pain subside. So she gave me the meds and they made me feel SO WEIRD. I couldn't even keep my eyes open. It was such a strange feeling but I was so grateful to get something to help with the pain. Unfortunately the IV meds only last for an hour before they start to wear off. So by the time the hour was over my contractions were super close together and quite painful! I was watching my contractions come and go on the little paper that it prints out on and they were completely off the charts at the peak of the contraction. I was hurting. So I asked Justin to go find a nurse and ask if I could please get the epidural now. He came back with a nurse but she said that I couldn't have an epidural now because the anesthesiologist was in doing a C-Section. So she gave me another round of the IV meds and left. About 45 minutes went by and the IV meds started to wear off again. I asked Justin to go find the nurse again. She came back in and said that the anesthesiologist was still in the C-Section and she gave me one last round of IV meds. She informed me that the more I was given the IV meds the faster they would wear off. (Uh, yeah. Figured that one out on my own. Thanks.) But I didn't care. I couldn't sit there without something to ease the pain. After she gave me the meds she left again. This time they only lasted about a half hour. By the time they wore off this time I was, well, less than amused. I wanted to beat that girl that came in late for her C-Section! At one point I looked up at Justin, who was stroking my hair trying to keep me calm, and said, "I hate that stupid Mexican girl! Why did she not come when she was supposed to!?!" I'm not sure how Justin kept a straight face for that. But he did and I was grateful. It probably would have made me even more mad if he'd laughed at me at that point.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural. At this point, my body had already been through so much I could barely move. The nurse asked me to sit up and hang my legs off the side of the bed. I asked Justin to come and help me sit up but the nurse wouldn't let him help me! My stomach muscles were so tired from all of the contractions, I couldn't sit up by myself so I looked at Justin, grabbed his hand and insisted that he help me. I, eventually, was able to sit up and get myself all situated. The anesthesiologist gave me the epidural. Once the epidural was in my system I immediately started to feel cold. My feet and legs were so cold and I could not get warm. I told the nurse and she kept telling me that I wasn't cold, my legs and feet were just numb and so it felt like I was cold. I called bull crap on that one. I was freezing! She was right in that I couldn't feel my toes but that's because they felt so stinking cold I could barely feel them. At one point Justin came over to sit with me and try to help me warm up, he touched my arm that was covered in goosebumps and said that my arm was really hot. How could my body be hot when I was feeling so cold? The nurse walked in when he was telling me this but she didn't seem to think that it was strange and kept on insisting that I wasn't cold, just numb. She examined me again and decided that I was at a 5 and not ready to push yet. She then turned off the lights and told us to try and get some rest since the epidural was doing it's job making it so I could only feel slight pressure from my contractions.  I'm not sure how much sleep Justin was able to get but I know for a fact that I didn't get a whole lot. Between the pressure from the contractions and the stupid blood pressure cuff going off what felt like every 5 seconds, sleep was hard to come by. I was able to rest a little and save up a bit of energy.