Work Work Work Work work

Mark works on Sundays and is the only person trained to do the Saints shift. When our son was born, he tried to convince them to train a backup person in case I went into labor on a weekend. They didn’t, but neither did I. I had an induction on a Tuesday and delivered on a Wednesday. So once again, it was Saints season, and my due date was approaching. He kept reminding them. His rule was that if I went into labor Friday through Sunday, they would be SOL. I guess since I had the induction and a weekend birth didn’t happen last time, that would be the case. 

So here we were on a Saturday in the early stages of labor. Mark called his two supervisors to tell them sorry not sorry, but he wouldn’t be in the next day. They had to scramble to find someone capable enough to get a crash course. 

In triage, I was definitely having contractions every five to six minutes, edging closer to five. On Monday, my cervix was clamped shut and baby was very high. When I had the emergency visit on Thursday, baby was still high but I’d dilated to a 2, headed for 3, but not very soft. I figured with all of the contractions and with the time that had passed, there would probably be a big change. Nope. I was getting stretchy, at 3 moving to 4. Baby was still a little high. They kept me on the monitor for 30 minutes, checked all of that, and called my doctor. 

They needed me to dilate to 5 before I could be admitted. Because I was still only 38 weeks, I couldn’t get any sort of induction to get things moving. However, according to the nurse, my doctor “isn’t mean.” She said this with a wink. Sounds like maybe she would have helped things along if installed out. That would be nice, because I was getting tired of contractions and I couldn’t get an epidural until after I was formally admitted. 

Mark had to coach his sub over the phone, so he walked to the waiting area outside of my MFM doctor’s office. Since it was a weekend, that office was closed. It’s also accessed through the doors that we weren’t able to enter from the parking garage since it was a Saturday. As a result, it was dark and deserted. He was on the phone for over an hour. I flipped the tv to Family Feud (being Saturday, there was nothing else to watch) and texted with some people. Including, but not limited to, my friend who was going to be my long-term sub. She was going to have to take over withoutbgetting to shadow me as planned. But the best part of being friends with your sub is that you can text and keep up and help out the whole time with ease. 

After the nurse talked to my doctor, she said I needed to walk. She gave me another hospital gown to wear like a robe and showed me what to do with all of my monitor wires. I wandered around slowly for almost an hour. At one point, I ran into Mark. I could hear his voice echoing and followed it. I had to take a break by that point and sat in the lobby with him. When he finished coaching his sub, we walked together. I had to stop frequently to let contractions pass. We ran into one nurse coming on shift and two older women waiting for their niece  to go back for a c-section. They had the same names as my mom and her twin, which was funny. They said I looked nice and low. But I carry low, and people always accused the baby of dropping already, but that was never the case. Other than that, there was no one. That was nice because under my front and back gowns was nothing. And I’m not into being braless around people. 

After I was back in my room for a bit, the nurse came to hook me back up. About half an hour later, she came back and checked me. I was almost to 5 cm and my contractions were picking up. I was getting admitted! 

They rolled me down the hall to my labor and delivery room. It was a little after 6, 6:30 I guess. I immediately put in the order for my epidural. That didn’t happen until around 8. My nurses changed shifts in between rolling me to my room and getting the epidural. All of the nurses there are so nice and professional. I’m not the biggest fan of this Hospital, but I have loved the L&D nurses for both births and recoveries. 

I at one point said to the new nurse that I didn’t know how people could labor all the way to the end. She agreed. With the induction, I got my epidural pretty quickly because they knew I was definitely going to deliver at some point. Because this time they needed me to labor to a certain point and didn’t know how long that would take, I was not given the chance to get it early. And that sucked. 

As soon as I got the epidural, Life was so much better. I told Mark to use that time to go eat dinner and I banned him from the room until he’d eaten. He had to leave during the anesthesia anyway, so he may as well have been productive. 

By the time he got back, I was close to 8 cm.