After another sleepless night in the hospital, my doctor showed up bright and early in the morning to check our progress. She reviewed our overnight monitoring and saw that your heart rate fluctuated once or twice during the night when I had a few minor contractions. Since my condition wasn’t improving and you were far enough along, she felt that you should be delivered ASAP. Now I know that moms to be are never prepared for their big day, but I couldn’t describe how overwhelmed I felt at that moment.
We discuss both cesarean section versus a vaginal birth and our doctor was willing to try for a natural birth. However, at any sign of complication we would revert to a c-section. I was really hoping for a natural delivery, so I was happy. Before we began the inducement process, our doctor wanted to make sure you could handle the heavy contractions and the birthing process, so they wanted to give us what they call a non stress test. During this test they would provide me with medication to give several contractions to see how you would respond. If you passed the test we would proceed with a natural birth. If not, we would opt for a c-section.
After they hooked my IV up with the Pitocin used to give me minor contractions, the test only lasted 1 hour. Thankfully, you passed the test with flying colors. Around 11am, the decision was made to move forward with an induced natural birth.
The next the step was to get my cervix ready for deliver. Since my body wasn’t “ready” to deliver you, they had to give me a medication called Cervidil to soften my cervix. I won’t get into too much detail but the medication is applied to the cervix through an application very much like a tampon. It was a painless process.
Since the Cervidil takes up to 8 hours to soften my cervix we had a lot of down time. In the meantime, they decided to move me to a permanent room for delivery. The nurses allowed Daddy to choose a room for us since they had two available. He picked a nice room that had a decent view of the mountains. Here we are transferring to our new room:
In the early evening, the nurses checked my cervix and decided that we needed another round of Cervidil before they began inducing. Your Aunt Val came down from San Francisco to keep us company, take care of your canine brother Iki and to pick up some much needed coffee from Starbuck for your dad.
Around 10pm, our doctor felt that my cervix was soft enough to begin inducing. They hooked my IV up to Pitocin and began the process. My doctor estimated that you would be delivered sometime in the late evening the next day. We were hoping that you would be born today since your dad and I both have birthdays on the 19th (mine in February and your dad’s in May), but in a way I was relived to have some extra time to prepare.
Love,
Mommy
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