Benz was due May 2nd, but my doctor was convinced he was going to come early. This posed a couple of problems for us!! First, my doctor was going to be out of town April 23rd – April 28th. Second, Finals week was April 27th through May 6th. So we started talking about inducing. Now, thanks to several horror stories I’ve read on the internet and also heard from friends and family, I was terribly afraid of inductions. And pitocin. And Emergency C-Sections. And long painful labor. (I guess this can happen without being induced. i.e. Juliet.)
Well, we prayed about it as a family, and my doctor scheduled the induction date and April 22nd slowly rolled around. Who am I kidding, it was only a week away!!! Time flew by! But by the time I called the hospital on Wednesday morning to find out what time we needed to go in I was feeling pretty good about it. Plus I was so tired of being pregnant! I just wanted to start getting my body back to normal! I did my hair and makeup and we left for the hospital to be induced at 6:30 that morning.
Everything went PERFECTLY. I’ve heard that inductions usually take 10-12 hours from start to finish, sometimes more sometimes less, but even though this baby was being evicted he must have been pretty ready to go. At 7 they started pitocin and broke my water. I was dilated to a 2 (and had been for the last two weeks) and hadn’t had any contractions. (I’ll just add here that Bensen was 38 weeks and 4 days along. Another reason I was nervous to induce, he was so early!)
Brett was a real trooper. There wasn’t a couch or anything in the labor and delivery room, so he was trying to catch a nap on this tiny chair with his feet propped up on a stool. I was too excited to sleep and got online and was reading a question answer session from an OBGYN. Pretty entertaining. Well I started having contractions around 8:30 but they weren’t bad. But everyone knows how contractions are – they got progressively worse. They still weren’t too bad when Brett left for class at 9:10. The most awful experience of the whole day was when I realized I had to pee soooooo bad, but since they had broken my water already they weren’t going to let me get up to go to the bathroom. I had to pee in a bed pan. BOO! It was gross. I hated it. Well around 11 a.m. the contractions were bad enough that they got the anesthesiologist in there to administer the epidural. That was kind of fun since it only really took on one side. I was dilated to a 5 and the contractions were pretty intense. But only in that one spot on my right side. They finally rolled me over so that gravity could take care of it, and soon I was blissfully numb. The only downside was that to get the epidural to take on that one side they cranked it up really high, and my left side just was totally dead for HOURS. But, it was totally worth it. ☺ Brett came home from class about 11:20. He had debated going to Spanish class, but we found out later that it was a good thing he didn’t!! at 12:30 they checked me again and I was dilated to a “9 or 10” as the nurse put it. She said we’d start pushing in a half hour. Just so the doctor could be there.
Well, 1 o’clock rolls around, and they tell me to start pushing! And 3 pushes later Bensen was born. It was easier than pie.
Sweet angel baby was born April 22nd 2009 at 1:03 p.m. He was 9 lbs. 6 oz, and was 21 inches long. Can you imagine how big he would have been if I hadn’t induced a week and a half early?? Sounds like all the rest of my babies are going to be inductions.
My sweet babies! There is nothing like holding a baby in your arms for the first time and knowing that you are his whole world. Juliet is 19 months old now, and I’m still her whole world. There is nothing like being loved by the most perfect things on earth. That just boggles my mind – that these little people are perfect in every way, and out of everyone in the whole world, they love ME.
