On Monday November 28th, I went in for my thirty eight week appointment. At my appointment, my blood pressure was 138/98, so they wanted to do further testing to rule out preeclampsia. They took a urine sample and ordered blood work. My urine came back as normal but my blood test revealed that I had elevated uric acid. Elevated uric acid on its own is usually not cause for concern but in conjunction with my elevated blood pressure, they were concerned about the potential for eventually developing preeclampsia. My OB wanted me to come in again on Thursday to recheck my blood pressure and uric acid levels to ensure they weren’t rising. That Thursday my blood pressure was still elevated and ended up measuring 135/102.
My doctor then suggested that an induction that day was the best thing to do to prevent my blood pressure from getting any worse & prevent any complications from happening to me or baby. I of course wanted to go into labor naturally on my own, so I was quite bummed to hear that my doctor wanted to induce me that day, but knew that this was the best decision for making sure my blood pressure didn’t get any worse. I told my doctor that I really wanted to avoid magnesium sulfate at all costs & thankfully my blood pressure never got up into that “treatable” range where I would have needed it, but who knows what would have happened if I wouldn’t have gotten induced that day. (I wanted to avoid mag sulfate because it tends to make people feel like crap and can work against the pitocin in an induction- since it helps to relax the muscles while pitocin helps you contract) My doctor ended up admitting me directly from my appointment to L&D and Zach ran home to grab our hospital bags and walk the dogs!
I got up to my room on the labor and delivery floor around 9 am. I got dressed into a little hospital gown and they started my IV. At my 36-week appointment, I tested positive for GBS (group B strep), so they had to give me penicillin every 4 hours during labor. I was so nervous for this because I read so many stories online saying how the penicillin burned and it was worse than labor, but I am here to tell you it was not bad at all, promise! At this time, they also started my pitocin at a dose of 4. I supposedly was having contractions within an hour of being on pitocin, but I couldn’t feel them at all yet. Around 11:30 am, they increased my pitocin to 6. I still couldn’t feel any contractions so Zach and I were really just chillin’ at this point.
Around 1 they increased my pitocin to 8 and by 1:30 pm I was dilated to a 2 & 90% effaced so my doctor broke my water. I was super nervous for this too because I have heard mixed stories on artificial rupture of membranes (when your doctor breaks your water), but it truly was NOT bad at all and it didn’t hurt! I just started slowly leaking after this and wore a diaper to prevent getting fluids everywhere lol! At 2:00 pm, they turned my pitocin up to 10 and shortly after this is when things started getting real. Up until this point I really didn’t feel many contractions and if I did, they were very mild period like cramps! By 2:15pm, I was contracting every 4 minutes and by 3pm they were pretty painful, I wasn’t able to talk through them like I previously had been able to. At this point, my doula had arrived (THANK GOD) – she was a saving grace during those contractions. She helped me so much with relaxing, breathing and laboring through each contraction as they came on. I continued to moan through them from about 3-6 pm. It was ROUGH. My original plan was to hopefully go into labor on my own and try my best at an unmedicated birth (I was never against getting an epidural, but I wanted to try my best to labor as long as I could without one because I truly didn’t know what to expect).
After laboring through intense pitocin contractions for 3 hours, I was exhausted and miserable and only dilated to a 4-4.5. Not to mention, they ended up having to turn my pitocin down to 3 because I kept having coupling contractions that would come back to back with no break and it was so painful. I decided around 6pm to get the epidural to help me relax. OH MY GOD, best decision ever. Truly a gift from God. I wanted to kiss my anesthesiologist after he put the epidural in because I felt SO much relief and was able to relax. He also did a fabulous job and had the epidural placed in less than 5 minutes and it didn’t hurt one bit (probably because the pain was nothing compared to the pitocin contractions, OUCH). I told Zach that I will never go without an epidural now because it truly helped SO much. I felt like I was actually able to enjoy the experience and have conversations and not be totally out of it because of the pain. I will say, the one negative about the epidural that I experienced was the shakes. I had them SO bad. They didn’t hurt at all but were uncomfortable because they were uncontrollable. However, I would take those over the pain any day.
Around 7pm my nurse checked me again and I was 5cm and fully effaced. Around 8pm they turned my pitocin back up to 5 and started changing my positions using the peanut ball to hopefully help me dilate even further. The peanut ball worked MIRACLES because after only an hour of doing some side lying peanut ball positions, I had progressed to 9cm 100% effaced & +1 station. We continued to use the peanut ball for the next hour and by 10pm I was 10cm and 100% effaced & +1 station. Because I didn’t feel any pressure to push yet, I just asked to labor down for an hour in hopes baby would drop a bit more into +2 or +3 station. Around 11pm I still didn’t feel much pressure to push but we started pushing just to see if we could move her down a bit with my pushes. I continued to push from 11-2:30 am (3.5 hours) and ended up not progressing any further. We tried EVERY position we could. Even with the epidural, I was on my hands and knees pushing, I was in a squat position pushing, I was on my side with the peanut ball pushing, we legit tried everything and still no progress. She was stuck in my pelvis and not moving down.
By 3 am, I was completely exhausted, my head was pounding from pushing so hard & I realized that we needed to just do a C-section to get her out safely. I prayed so hard that I would progress and it just didn’t happen, so I had fully accepted the fact that I needed a C-section at this point and I was okay with it. I knew in my heart and gut that it was the right decision and I knew there was absolutely nothing else that we could have done or tried to get her to come vaginally. Thankfully, this whole time, she looked amazing on the monitors so it wasn’t an emergent C-section. They ended up turning off my pitocin and the anesthesiologist came in to give me more meds through my epidural to start numbing me for the C-section. Honestly, I expected myself to be more nervous and anxious about getting the C-section than I was but truthfully I was just so exhausted and wanted to meet our little girl more than anything so I was willing to do whatever needed to be done to get her here safely. Around 4 am they took us back to the operating room, they prepped me and gave me more meds to numb me up to make sure I wasn’t gonna feel anything. I ended up feeling extremely nauseous after getting some of the meds and puked – that was NOT fun. I also continued to have pretty bad shakes throughout the entire procedure, which sucked a lot, not gonna lie.
At 4:25 am on 12/2/22 Marlow Marie Turner was born! The minute we heard her cry, nothing else in the entire world mattered. Tears immediately filled both of our eyes and it was truly the most magical sound in the world. They pulled down the drape and allowed us to see her too which was so surreal even though I was so looped up. Thankfully Zach got to cut the cord, see her getting measured, and hold her while I was getting sutured up. The worst part of the whole C-section was having to wait for them to finish suturing me up to hold my baby. Zach held her by my face but I was so out of it and still in so much pain (I could feel so much pressure when they were suturing, I felt miserable) that I wasn’t really able to enjoy her presence because I was so uncomfortable. During the C-section, we found out that Marlow’s head was sideways in my pelvis and her head was extended instead of flexed & that she was most likely in that position stuck for awhile. Everytime I pushed, I was jamming her further into my pelvic bone. She ended up coming out with some trauma to her poor face – she had a big cut and bruise on her the right side of her cheek from my pelvic bone and her poor ear and head was all bruised and purple too.
Looking back on the pictures and videos from our delivery makes me so sad because I truly was so out of it that I wasn’t able to enjoy much of it at all, but I was such a champ. I held it together, I was so strong, & I kept an open and positive mindset the whole time. I am so proud of myself for everything I went through that day to get our little girl here safely. It was truly so amazing to see how I handled myself throughout my whole labor experience, even though it was the exact opposite of what I hoped my birth story would have looked like. I know that it went exactly how God intended it to and I am just so grateful to have our sweet girl here safely. I would gladly do it all over again if I had to for her, all of the pain was more than worth it. Once I was able to hold her after they finished suturing me up, I forgot all about everything I had just went though (even though it was slightly traumatic). Truly nothing else but her mattered. So although my birth story was not how I anticipated it, I wouldn’t change it for the world because it gave me my sweet girl & I truly couldn’t ask for more.
