I’d had enough.
After the first two pregnancies, no more inductions please.
Towards the end of my pregnancies, around week 36, my blood pressure elevates if I even look at a stairway. Seriously.
Last Wednesday, I went in for a routine weekly appointment. I parked on the wrong side of the building and didn’t want to re-park my car, so I walked to whole 40 feet to the other side. Upon assessing my vitals, BP was at 150. I had to go to the hospital and be evaluated and monitored. After 15 minutes of rest, BP was back down to 118. High BP is enough to send any OBGYN into an induction-tizzy.
And. I. hate. being. induced.
It is intense, and I feel rushed and on a deadline. With Caleb, the intervention almost led to a c-section, with Emma it took 24 hours for my body to ripen. The fact of the matter is my body has a disposition of a toddler- rush it, and it will drag it’s heels.
So, that’s why I was eating my friend Paul’s spicy taco casserole like it was going out of style; I was trying to avoid pitocin. And after a week of spicy foods, jumping jacks, squatting, walking, stair climbing, and other old wives tales, but no baby I concluded that self-induction is a freakin’ joke and was conceived to pass the time not to actually advance labor. (Who are these “old wives” anyways?)
That Thursday, I’d been having BH contractions for weeks {yawn}, and did a lot of power-squatting and it was finally getting me somewhere- unplugged. Globs were becoming dislodged, hooray. That evening, I convinced Mike to order some spicy buffalo chicken fingers and coaxed him into trying a few induction pressure points on me. This was not our first time dabbling in acupressure…
Back in 2008, Michael and I enrolled in a birthing seminar in preparation for Caleb’s arrival. One evening the class covered pressure points beneficial for women during labor and postpartum. One point, which aids in lactation, Mike found specifically well. It was also that same point that the instructor demonstrated on me twice.
Two hours later while settling down to bed, my boobs sprung a leak. I was wet all night. That is when we learned my threshold for pressure points.
I don’t know if Mike had forgotten about my sensitivity or was just underestimating the power of acupressure, but he went all-out on every pressure point, rubbing and holding each area. By 7:30, I went to bed.
(Remember my bed?)
10:00 I woke up completely wet. My couch was soaked.(Why does every experience I have with acupressure end up with me being soggy while sleeping?) My water broke. No contractions. Just so much fluid and I was still leaking. Heavily.
I was freaked-out. I’d never had my water break outside a hospital.
We called the on-call doctor (since, you know, my regular doctor was in Bermuda... how cliché) and he told us to “mozy” on over to confirm my water had indeed broke. After dropping off Caleb at our friends’ the Hartys, we drove the twenty-five minutes to our hospital. Halfway there I realized that in thirty minutes it would be December 31st and, odds were, Nathanael’s birthdate. New Year’s Eve and Emma’s original due date.
We check into the hospital around midnight. The nurse gave me an ambien to help me sleep while we waited for contractions to start.
They started at 1:00 AM. I let Mike sleep as I counted and breathed through the contractions. It was like clockwork. The first hour, they were 7 minutes apart, the next they were 5. By three o’clock they were 3 minutes apart and really beginning to cramp my style. I woke up Mike and called the nurse for pain relief, knowing they wouldn’t get to me for another hour. Yeah, I’ve done this before.
After the best epidural I’ve ever had, I slept and waited for the tell-tale pelvic pressure, so I could begin pushing. It came around 9:00. Nathanael made his way into the world at 10:04 AM, one pound heavier than predicted. Mike was finally able to cut the cord, something he had yet to have done with our previous children.
I cannot describe the elation I felt when they scooped up Nate and placed him on my stomach and began to clean and garnish him, so I won’t. But you can imagine. Like you can imagine the color blue. :)
