Pregnancy: Third Trimester Community

Short: Avriana Celine was born Saturday, May 26th at 2:55 a.m. (at 10 days past due via successful vbac)

Long: Thursday I had cramping off and on all day. Friday, same thing in the morning. Shae and I had our usual Friday morning hanging out. Then around 11:00 they starting getting painful and were 4 minutes apart. I put Gat, my mom, and my doula on standby just so they'd be aware. Gat got home from work about 1:00 (he works a short day on Fridays) and showered and got ready. My dad came home from work early because my mom had to go to town to the doctor for a horrible bladder infection. Once we were ready, he came up to our house to hang out with Shae (she was still napping) until my mom got home. We headed to the city around 2:00 with the contractions still 4 minutes apart and getting stronger. Checked into the hospital at 3:15, was at a 3 and still having good hard contractions every 4 minutes. By about 7:30 I decided I wanted an epidural because nothing was helping with the pain and I was still only at 5 cm so I knew I had a long way to go. Got my epidural and once it kicked in I felt good and got some rest. They gave me a button for it so I could give myself a dose when I started feeling pain. At some point they checked me and I was a 7-8 and she was still at 0 station so they had me get up on my knees and lean on the back of my bed to help her move down more. I did that for about 45 minutes or so. Then they checked me, and my water broke and there was meconium in it. My nurse was AMAZING and was so great about reassuring me that it was nothing to panic about. However, shortly after that, the baby's heart rate kept dropping so they kept having me switch from one side to the other to try to get it up. That didn't work so I had to have oxygen. Her heart rate came back up and I got complete. At about 1:45 a.m. they had me start pushing and I quit using my epidural because I couldn't feel to push good. I was still on the oxygen and had to be on my side between contractions because with each contraction, her heart rate would drop down into the 50s and 60s. The doctor said that if I didn't get her out soon, they were going to move me to the OR to deliver because she couldn't let me go much longer with her heart rate dropping that low and that I'd have to have a c-section if I couldn't get her out soon. So somewhere around 2:30 they took me in the OR, I got on the operating table and continued to push there. She had me push on every other contraction to give baby's heartrate time to recover between pushing. Everyone was prepping everything for a c-section and I was pushing my ass off. They'd been able to see her head pretty much from the time I started pushing and I was so scared that I was going to get to that point and still wind up with a c-section. It was seriously so frustrating! The doctor kept reminding me that I needed to get her out soon or she'd have to do the c-section. I asked her if I could try squatting or something and she said no, that it wasn't that I wasn't pushing well, just that I didn't have time to get her out because of the decels...

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