Labor and Delivery Part III

Once I got to the delivery room and my family had all been notified the Miss R would be making her arrival, things moved very quickly. There was no recovery time between the contractions. I could hardly breathe through each one and was unsure I'd be able to take another one.

I kept telling myself that it would be over soon and Miss R would be here but it was had to focus and not be overwhelmed by the pain. SP did everything he could to remind me to breathe because I just wanted to hold my breath until the pain went away and that seemed to make it worse. There was a lot of sweating, bed clenching and the random curse word uttered through gritted teeth.

After what seemed like HOURS, I finally got an epidural at 10:45. I started feeling somewhat human as the pain from the contractions disappeared.

The doctor checked me and I was 6 cm dilated. The nurse said a couple more contractions and I wouldn't have been able to get the epidural because I was so close to delivering.

Then...all hell broke lose.

Before I knew it there were 6 nurses rushing into the room, the doctor was being called to the room STAT and an oxygen mask was being placed on me. I remember saying, you all are freaking me out...but no one would talk to me because too many other things were going on. I started to get scared because I didn't know what was happening and everything got very medical very quickly. All I could do was hold SP's hand and do what they told me to do.

Turns out, Miss R's heart rate had dropped dramatically because I went from 6 cm to 10 in 2 minutes. The change to my cervix so quickly was hard on her. Then my heart rate dropped as well. All the activity was to make sure we were both ok and in the end we were.

All this seemed like it went on in slow motion and took forever, but it really didn't because soon I started pushing. Turns out Miss R was already coming out on her own. She wasn't messing around and made her way into the world by 11:41 AM.

From the time I got to the hospital until she was born, it was a total of 3 hours give or take a few minutes. All told from the time I first thought my water broke it was 8.5 hours. My girl was ready to come and wasn't waiting for anyone or anything.