My son is two now. His birth is both fresh in my mind as we are now pregnant again, but also so long ago. I woke up at 2am and from 2am to 4am, I could not get my baby to move so we called the doctor and headed to the hospital to get checked out. I started drinking a cold coke on the way to the hospital and baby perked right up, though!
Everything looked good when we got to the hospital, but the doctor recommended that I be induced so I agreed. We were already a couple days past our due date. The used a balloon to start dilating me and began a pitocin drip. For the first day, contractions weren't bad but I also wasn't progressing. Baby was comfortable and had no desire to move! That night they let me off the pitocin for a couple hours since my body was no longer responding to it and they let me take a shower and eat a real meal, which felt great. That night, contractions became painful but manageable.
The next morning the doctor broke my water to try to encourage my labor to progress but because baby was not engaged, I was not allowed even to get out of bed because they didn't want the umbilical cord getting pinched. It was awful. Contractions got progressively more painful, but I was stuck at 4cm because baby wasn't moving down and pushing on my cervix. That evening, I told my husband I needed to have an epidural or I needed to die, that I needed to have the baby or I needed to die. The gave me the epidural and I did not enjoy it or the catheter that they placed in my bladder. It made my bladder/urethra hurt and I was still in a decent amount of pain. I hated that it also kept me from feeling my legs. Doctor came to check on me--still at 4cm, so he worked to try to manually dilate my cervix. That was also quite painful. I think he got me up to 6 or 7 cm.
I rested for a while and had the nurse check on my baby--he'd moved down some, and she agreed to let me up long enough to use the restroom. I got up and went to the bathroom. More time passed. I think the doctor came back around midnight and I was asking what we needed to do. He was concerned about how long my water had been broken at that point and the risk for infection for me and the baby. He recommended that we do a c-section, but agreed I could labor a little longer first.
Around 2am, I felt it--I felt my baby had moved and started pushing on my own. It felt amazing after two days of helplessness. I had my husband get the nurse and she started coaching us through it and to,d someone else to get the doctor--our baby was coming! I remember it hurting so bad but also feeling progress, feeling my child move and wanting to just keep pushing. At 2:47am, our sweet son was born and as I felt his body slip out, absolutely nothing else mattered. He was out and he was perfect and the pain just melted away. I had second degree tears and was definitely tender but didn't need anything stronger than ibuprofen to manage the pain/swelling.
I'm hoping to have a better experience and a natural labor (without pitocin and with the freedom to move) with our new baby, but if I had to go through everything again I'd do it in a heartbeat and ten times over for the joy of motherhood.