Life with the Meyers Family: Leah's Birth

I had a doctors appointment on the morning of the 14th (since the week before I turned down being induced at the suggestion of my mother and by that point I was regretting it!). I was only dilated to a 2 so I had progressed from a 1 the week before, but not much. The doctor stripped my membranes in hopes of starting labor and then I had to 'pass' a non-stress test and have an ultrasound to make sure I had enough fluids and the baby was doing ok since I was a week late in order for them to let me try and make it thru the weekend. Due to my PTO being maxed out I didn't go back to work after my appointment and instead went home and tried to nap. I found that I couldn't really sleep, I tried from 12:30 to 3 but kept getting woken up by awful back pains which looking back on were probably contractions. I finally stopped trying to sleep at 3 and got up. Once I did that my back pain became pretty much constant but every few minutes it would spread to my stomach area. Since I didn't have any Braxton Hicks I didn't know for sure if they were 'real' or not but I sure was hoping they were since they hurt so bad! I started timing them with my handy contraction app and after an hour I gave in and called the expert, my mom. At that point they were 3 to 3.5 minutes apart and lasting around 30 seconds. My mom told me to take a hot shower to help with the back pain and to keep timing as she wanted them to be closer to a minute long before going to the hospital and to call back in an hour. I then texted Brian saying that he needed to come home from work soon as I thought I was having contractions. Brian got home just before 5 and my contractions had stayed consistent at 3 minutes apart and were lasting about 45 seconds. After checking in with my mom, she told me to wait another 30 minutes and then to head to the hospital.

We got to the hospital just before 6 and I was up to a 3 and was fully effaced. They went ahead and admitted me (probably because I was a week late) and we were to our room around 6:30. I got my epidural around 8:30 which luckily took away the back pain along with the abdomen contraction pain. They kept having problems tracking Leah's heart rate so they put a sensor thing right on her scalp to help keep an eye on her. Her heart rate kept doing decelerations with my contractions and she wasn't recovering like she should have. The nurse kept having to move me into different positions to get her back on track. The doctor threw out doing a C-section since things kept getting iffy but we turned it down since she did recover each time there was a problem, it just took a while. Then around 11, right after my dad and sisters headed out and of course my mom had stepped out of the room for the first time all night, about 15 hospital staff came rushing into the room and terrified us! This included the anesthesiologist who shot me up with a round of numbness as they were readying me for an emergency section. Just as the doctor and my mom came ino the room she recovered again so we again turned down the C-section. Over the next hour Leah had a few more decelerations and the doctor again tried to talk us into a section. The anesthesiologist was about to go start a long surgery so if Leah were to need another emergency section I would have to have it without the help of an anesthesiologist which would be even more painful. So, after talking with Brian and my mom we gave in and agreed to the section shortly before midnight. The risk of something bad happening to our daughter wasn't worth taking. I was wheeled into surgery a little before 1 and Leah Marie was born at 1:10 am weighing in at a whopping 6 lbs 10 oz and was 19.5 inches long.