Hi - I gave birth at the Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington. I was with an OB practive for my prenatal care and so my delivery was with an OB. I felt very strongly about not wanting any interventions unless, of course, our lives were at stake. I ended up developing pre-eclampsia on the 37th week of my pregnancy. My OB sent me directly from my check up appointment (which was at 2pm) to the hospital to deliver. At the appointment I was already at 4 cm. Instead of going straight to the hospital, I went back to work to wrap up some things, then I went home, took a shower, finished packing my bag and got to the hospital only around 8pm. When I got to the hospital I was at 6cm. I needed an IV for medication to get my blood pressure down (this medication also ended up stopping my contractions - because they give the same medication to preterm labor patients to curb the labor as the pre-eclampsia patients. It's the safest one out there for the baby), so my natural contractions stopped. I was told I'll need pitosin to start them up again, so I asked if we could wait to see if the contractions will start on their own. I was given an ample amount of time (I ended up falling asleep at 11pm or so and woke up at 5am) and was rested up and ready to keep going to give birth to this baby :) My contractions have not started on their own so I agreed to pitosin and to the doctor breaking my water. My contractions picked up, labor progressed beautifully, and at 11:10am I was ready to push. At 11:29am my daughter (she is my first baby) was born :)
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I was very happy with the whole experience even though I did have those few interventions. I know that if I did not have the hospital technologies at my disposal, everything may have turned out not as good for either myself or baby or both. All the horror stories I had read made the hospital sound scary, however, seems to me you can still have a low or no interventions birth at this hospital.
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