Towards the end of my pregnancy my doctor was concerned because baby's heart rate was all over the place. At one prenatal appointment, her heart rate was at 200 beats per minute. I had an appointment two days before my due date. I was told that if baby didn't come on her own over the weekend we needed to induce the following week on Tuesday. As much as I hated the idea of an induction, I agreed. I went home and relaxed and prayed that baby would come on her own. When David got home from work that day we made plans for the induction. He was sending a message to his manager at work and as he did so we realized what date Tuesday was: February 2nd, Scarlett's birthday. I panicked and tried to change the date of the induction but it was too late. I prayed and prayed all weekend that I wouldn't have to be induced but sure enough, Tuesday morning came and I was still pregnant.
The induction was scheduled for 7 am Tuesday morning but we were told to call an hour before to check availability. I woke up that morning at 4:30 to get ready. We lived almost an hour from the hospital so we would need to leave by 6 am to get there by 7. We loaded everything we needed into the car and called the charge nurse before leaving like we were instructed to do. The nurse told me that a lot of people had come in during the night and that they were filled to capacity. She told me to call back in 4 hours to check again. This was so frustrating to me. Was I being induced today? What was I supposed to do for 4 hours? I certainly couldn't go back to sleep and I couldn't eat because I was told to only have a very light breakfast, which I already had. At this point the kids were awake so I sat with them and watched children's nursery rhyme videos on youtube. My mom decided to take Hazel with her to the store and David decided to work out. I was going crazy just sitting around so I decided to go to the grocery store to get a couple things that we would need after coming home from the hospital. I was just getting ready to go when I noticed I had a new voicemail on my phone; it was from the charge nurse telling us we could come in. I told David and he just continued his workout. I said to him, "We were just told we could go have our baby now- do you really want to keep working out?" He went and took a quick shower and we were on our way. We arrived at the hospital at 10 am. I filled out some paperwork and then we waited in the waiting room for our nurse to come get us. I kept thinking how weird being induced was. I was at the hospital getting ready to have a baby but wasn't yet in labor. While we were waiting there was a very interesting guy who kept talking to David. He said he was waiting while his wife was in a c-section, yet we saw him kissing another woman in the waiting room. He was talking to David about how it was his dream to move to Oregon and have a marijuana farm. The woman at the front desk looked at me sympathetically and said our nurse was almost ready.
Pretty soon our nurse, Megan, came and got us. She took us back to the delivery room and had me change into a hospital gown. I looked at the clock-- 10:45 am. I was hooked up to some monitors and was told they wanted to monitor the baby for a while before starting the induction. I was also hooked up to an IV of antibiotics because I had group b strep. After a while my doctor came in and checked me. I was 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced, I had dilated a whole cm since I was checked the afternoon before. The doctor broke my water and told the nurse she could start me on Pitocin. The IV of Pitocin was started at 11:30 am. By 11:45 I started having contractions. I had a couple of mild contractions and then they hit HARD. They were very strong and right on top of each other. The nurse said I had to finish my bag of antibiotics and then I had to have another IV bag of fluids before I could get an epidural. She told me it would take about half an hour to finish the antibiotics and then another 15-20 minutes to administer the fluids. I was watching the clock and was in a lot of pain. The nurse asked the anesthesiologist if he could get everything prepped and ready so I could get an epidural as soon as the IV was finished. They ended up stopping the antibiotics and giving me the fluids so I could get my epidural sooner. It was so hard holding still for the epidural because I was in so much pain. After the epidural was put in I was told to lay on my right side. The contractions were horrible but I kept telling myself that I wouldn't be in pain for much longer because the epidural would start to kick in. Well, that did't happen. The pain kept getting worse and worse. The nurse had my flip onto my left side and as I did so if felt like the baby was going to fall out. The nurse checked me and I was ready to go. In just 15 minutes I had dilated from 4 cm to 10 cm. The doctor came in and said, "I'm sorry but your labor progressed faster than the epidural could kick in." It was time to push. I was embarrassed because I felt like I was being dramatic like in the movies. I definitely felt a strong urge to push but boy did it hurt. I remember reading that pushing helped relieve the pain from the contractions, which it did, but it created the new pain of baby crowning. I was so scared of tearing. I pushed twice and baby was head out. One more push and the rest of her followed. They handed her to me and I kept saying, "Oh, wow." I couldn't believe what I had just done and how quickly it had all happened. My labor was an hour and a half total from the time the Pitocin started to the time she was born.
All through the pregnancy we had a hard time agreeing on a name and Olive wasn't a name we had talked much about but when she was born we both had a strong feeling to name her Olive. Olive Miriam. Olive after my great grandmother and Miriam which is both my Mother's middle name and also another great grandmother's name. Olive is perfect and sweet. We couldn't be happier to have her in our family.
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