Another update

Well, I had a bit of a rough morning. They cranked up my pitocin every hour or two after my water broke, and by 5 am I was having rip roaring contractions that were less than 2 minutes apart. This intensified throughout the morning until around 10 a.m., at which point my contractions were literally off the charts (they were maxing out the contraction monitor) and typically less than a minute apart. On a pain scale of 1-10, every single contraction was a 10+. So, if you tried to call me or Iggy this morning, that's why we didn't answer the phone!

While I had been firmly committed to a natural labor and cocky enough to expect that it would be no problem for me to do so, I was reaching my limit. So, I asked the doctor to check my cervix, and the verdict was that we were still only 5 cm dilated (halfway there, but only 1 cm of progress in about 4 hours), but the reason why I was having so much pain was because I was having back labor (the baby's face is pointed towards my belly rather than towards my back) and his head is really low down in my pelvis. Knowing that I was facing several more hours of labor, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it without some kind of analgesia.

At first, I tried inhaled nitrous oxide, which is commonly used in Europe as a labor drug, but is only available at a few hospitals here. It was immediately obvious to me that it wasn't going to do much for my pain, and it was making me loopy to boot. So, I got an epidural, and all the pain magically went away, along with all sensation in the lower part of my body.

In addition to the back labor, I think the other reason why I was having so much pain is because they turned my pitocin up too high. In addition to my problems, the doctors noticed that the baby's heart rate was going down with each big contraction and wasn't recovering like they would have liked. So in addition to my epidural, they also completely turned off my pitocin and let everyone rest and recover for an hour or so. This was greatly appreciated, as I only got about 2 hours of sleep last night.

Now we both seem to be recovered from the first round and the pitocin is back on again although I don't seem to be contracting again yet. So, I think we're still expecting the little guy to arrive today, but it will probably be early evening at a minimum, I think.