The Rioux Family: April 2017

It amazes me how every delivery story is different, not only from person to person, but from baby to baby.

I was secretly hoping the whole time that she would come a tad early. We have family coming to visit, and the older she was when they came, the better. Well apparently she had other plans. On the day I turned 41 weeks we headed to the hospital for an induction. I guess it was a bad day because they were so busy! Since they had already told me it was ok to come in before they got bombarded they didn't send me home.

At about 8:30AM they started me on Pitocin and gave me a dissolvable pill that's supposed to soften the cervix. I was at a 0 and very high (and this is even after getting my membranes stripped). They also started me on Penicillin for Strep B. No one told me that stuff burns!

As time went on I still didn't progress so they used this weird thing that had balloons to try to stretch my cervix enough to break my water. That made my contractions worse on top of the Pitocin. It also ended up being in about 2 hours longer than it was supposed to be because they were so busy. After that they finally broke my water, expecting me to progress well after that.....I didn't.

Now, my goal was to go without an epidural if I could because I had done one each way, and the recovery without was nicer. Plus when I had Brook things got going real fast, and I had heard that can be a trend so I figured I could muscle through it. Little did I know what I was in for!

I would continue to progress VERY slowly. After over 12 hours of laboring I gave in and decided to get an epidural because I was so tired (I didn't sleep much the night before) and I knew I wasn't going to get any rest with the contractions I was getting.
When I got the epidural, the guy took forever to get it in, stuck something that made my leg hurt and then after about 15 minutes my arm and face started to tingle and a softball sized spot on my ribs started hurting really bad and I started dry heaving. Apparently my heart rate went up too because the nurse said mine and babies kept crossing. Turns out the needle was in too far and needed to be readjusted.

I thought maybe once I got to relax I'd start progressing, since that is what happened with Hailey. Nope. I was stuck at a 5 then a 7 for forever. I had to keep switching laying on my sides because baby's heart rate would dip, and then it kept dipping, so they decided she was under pressure from having my water broke, so they "pumped" me full of fluid again to relieve some stress.

In the morning I started to feel the contractions again even though my legs were still numb.

When I finally felt enough pressure for them to consider them to let me push, I was still high, plus baby was facing up instead of down. They tried to turn her, which sucks, and they didn't have much luck. They decided to have me push and work her down hoping she'd turn on her own as she got closer. I also started pushing on my side in hopes of keeping baby happy.

Now my pushing actually went super fast. She never really turned plus the cord was wrapped around her shoulders. And, of course, I tore a bit.

What I wasn't expecting was for them to put this baby that seemed so huge on my chest! She was 8lbs 12oz. My biggest baby yet!

As they were putting in my iud, they noticed I had a slight hemorrhaging problem. They gave me some meds in my iv and a shot in my thigh to help. Plus they turned the Pitocin up to help my uterus contract and stop bleeding so much.
I pretty much passed out after she was born. That has to be the hardest 24+ hours of my life! And the next 24 they would do these massages on my uterus to help it contract and oh my god does that hurt!

I guess that's what we get for going in with the thought things would progress fairly fast just because they did last time! She sure showed us haha

On March 29th at 11:55am Penelope Jane was born

8lbs 12oz 21 inches