Callahan's Birth Story
Callahan’s Birth Story: Part 2
Fast forward to my 39th week of pregnancy. It was July. I was gigantic, hot, and impatient. I wanted to meet my baby and I no longer wanted to be pregnant. I had a prenatal appointment on the 11th and I would be full term on the 13th. I was barely effaced and not dilated at all. I was so defeated. They wanted to see me back in the office on Monday. After a weekend of working on puzzles and eating gummy bears, I headed to my appointment on Monday morning. I was so incredibly anxious because I just wanted to have this baby already. Steve recalls me bouncing my leg so vigorously in the waiting room that he asked me what was wrong. When I was brought back, they took my blood pressure and, unsurprisingly, it was high (my blood pressure tends to fluctuate with my level of anxiety). When I told the doctor this, she said she would wait until the end of my appointment and take it again. It was elevated again. The protocol for 2 elevated blood pressures this late in pregnancy is to send me to the hospital. I started crying, the last thing I wanted was to be induced, and that’s where it looked like this was headed. My blood pressure did even out in the hospital, but we decided to go ahead with the induction since I was already there and past due with no signs of progress and a seemingly large baby.
July 15th
The induction process began with Cervadil, which needed to stay in for 12 hours (so overnight). At this point I was still pretty anxious about the delivery. Throughout my entire pregnancy I was terrified of hemorrhaging and dying. Everyone reassured me that hemorrhaging was rare and I was definitely not going to die. I remember counting all the women I knew who went in and had “normal” births and were back home with their baby within a day or two. This rationalization barely touched my anxiety, but I tried my best to put it to the back of my mind. I was so obsessed with my fear of hemorrhaging that I even wrote about it in the pregnancy journal during my second trimester (so creepy to see now!). My mom came to visit me in the hospital that night to give Steve a quick break to grab some food. When he came back we all played cards together, with me pausing each time a contraction came. My brother actually still has the napkin we kept score on! I barely slept that night because of the contractions and the constant vital checking.
July 16th
The next morning I was 70% effaced but still not dilated. At this point, I hadn’t eaten solid food since before I was admitted to the hospital. There was a bit of confusion about when the Pitocin was started and so they told me I wasn’t able to eat. Then we discovered I hadn’t actually been on Pitocin, so I could have been eating. I was apparently quite rageful about the lack of food. Thankfully, my doctor made sure I got a meal in before actually starting the Pitocin. That morning they inserted a Foley bulb balloon. I really regret not asking for an epidural prior to the Foley balloon. My contractions were now every 3 minutes, but I was okay tolerating the pain. Then, they started me on Pitocin and my contractions became more painful and only about a minute apart. I had difficulty tolerating these contractions because they were one on top of the other and I didn’t feel like I had a break at all. This lasted for a while and I was still only at 1 cm- talk about frustrated. I was so afraid of not progressing that I kept refusing the epidural and just trying to gut it out. Finally I had enough and asked for the epidural around 6pm that night. I was so relived when it began working. Later that evening, they pulled the Foley bulb balloon out and ruptured my membranes. I was anxious because I was growing increasingly exhausted and knew I still needed to push out a large baby as a first time mom. I was worried I wouldn’t have the energy to sustain hours of pushing.
