Here is what really happened: I got cervidil placed at about 5pm. At about 9:30pm I started feeling crampy and had a back ache but I knew that cervidil could do this so I tried and tried to sleep through them so that I wouldn't be so exhausted in the morning but the pain just kept getting worse and worse. Matt stayed with me but I insisted he sleep in the bed they had brought in for him so we weren't both exhausted. At about 1:30 am the the contractions started to really be hard, I woke Matt up and told him I needed help. I was up out of the bed and sitting on the ball, leaning over the bed and trying all kind of positions to ease the pain. I started throwing up some time shortly after that and about 3:30 the nurse decided to check me. I fully expected her to say I was closed and that this was just false labor but was shocked to hear that I was 2-3 centimeters! I was actually in labor from the cervidil! She suggested I get the epidural, I resisted for a moment but was easily convinced after another contraction.
The epidural was amazing! I was able to sleep and relax for several hours, they started pitocin at about 5am and turned it up slowly every hour or so. At about 8am I was checked again and they broke my water and was about 5 cm, a little while later I felt a lot of pressure and was checked again and I was 7cm! I continued to just relax and then about 11 or so I noticed that I was really feeling the contractions very strong again in my right side both back and front, the nurse checked me again and I was still 7cm. Anesthesia came in and gave me a bolus dose of medication and then the pain went away and my legs got very very heavy. Things seemed ok for a while, the doctor came in about 1pm and I hadn't made any progress, I also noticed that my pain was coming back on the right side again in the back and front. My doctor and I agreed that we would go until 3pm and then if I still hadn't progressed we would do a c-section. Anesthesia came in again and gave me a bolus but this time it didn't help at all. It isn't terribly uncommon to have windows of pain with an epidural so no one was particularly concerned that anything was wrong. The contractions were very intense because of the pitocin and it was about the worst couple of hours ever! At 3pm, the nurse checked me, I hadn't made any progress and we decided to do a c-section. My room filled quickly with people, 2 doctors, 2 anesthesiologists and several nurses.
This is when things took a very scary turn.
The Anesthesia team had decided they were going to do an epidural/ spinal combo. They would replace my epidural and we would use that for pain control post surgery and the spinal would numb me for surgery. They assured me prior to starting the the spinal would not have the same problems and that is would certainly get me numb. They put it in and I wasn't numb, I was still feeling every contraction on the right side. They kept testing me and testing me so see if I was getting numb and it seemed it was just making very slow progress. This went on for about 45 minutes in my room, everyone tried to play it very cool but I could tell they were starting to get concerned that I was not getting numb. I started asking about a back up plan and they said that if they couldn't get me numb then they would put me in twilight and I wouldn't remember anything but it would be ok for the baby and I wouldn't need general anesthesia. This was not the news I was hoping to hear. We were at a point where we couldn't wait any longer so they wheeled me in the the operating room to get this baby out one way or another.
Here are some pictures of labor and the prep for the c-section. I will continue in another post.
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