I went into labor around noon on a Saturday. Went to the hospital once my contractions were very regular for a while. The hospital said I was only 1 cm dilated and to go home but they gave me sleeping pills so I could sleep.
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I woke up the next day still in labor and was sure I must be progressing after midway through the day and got checked out again. Only 2 cm, so was sent home once again but no sleeping pills and I didn't sleep at all that night as every contraction was quite painful. Too painful for sleep.
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Went in on Monday night still in labor and things seemed to be a bit more painful. They checked me and said I was about 4 cm and they had me stay on the monitors and walk some. I was in a lot of pain and was pretty mainstream back then. I was really wanting that epidural I heard such great things about. (hate them now.)Â
They gave me a morphine shot to try to ease my pain but it really didn't do much of anything. I think the most painful thing was they just left me in bed to labor and I didn't know anything about being in other positions or anything. I was really naive.Â
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Finally the next morning, I took a shower and my doctor finally showed up to do a vag. exam and found me to be 6 cm and she went ahead and broke my water. Then the nurses told me I should do pitocin to speed things up. I was never told that there could be any negative side effects with pitocin, just that it would make things much faster and get it over sooner. After that, I was finally allowed to have an epidural which only worked well on one side. It also left me very numb on one side after the birth which was not comfortable at all. I also couldn't feel very well to push and had to have coached pushing for about 45 mins. The doc was getting upset by how long it was taking me to push but I read later on here that it can really take up to at 2 hours and she had no reason to be alarmed at that. She gave me an episiotomy for no reason at all. Baby wasn't in distress or anything. Guess she must make some money for those kind of interventions. The total labor and birth took around 73 hours.
After they cleaned up baby, I was allowed to nurse him. Then they took him in the nursery and took me to my room with my hubby following behind. I don't remember much else.Â
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I remember that I did partial room-in. I had him during the day but let him stay in the nursery at night. Hubby was allowed to stay in the room and we ended up with a private room, thankfully. Â I stayed in the hospital for 2 days and then got to go home.Â
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The experience didn't really faze me or anything until afterward when I became more informed. The episiotomy scar left me uncomfortable for about year and I was unable to be "loving" toward my husband during that time. That was difficult.Â
