food for fish

Hey so here's the scoop on the whole laboring process.

Alexis was induced on the morning of the 8th (we had to wait due to so many others in the delivery process were in) she was suppose to be induced just after midnight, but instead it didn't happen until 8:00.

Laboring increased pretty normally, and her water broke around 1:30. Labor continued but contractions were not increasing to more than about 1 in 5 or 6 min... not cool when you want labor to progress. So they continued to up the potosin, but contractions just weren't doing much.

As it progressed Emma's heart rate kept dropping during the contractions, but would go back to normal right afterwards.

Alexis was so exhausted, and the delivery wasn't progressing very quickly, and in so much pain she requested an epidural (not what she had planned, but after that amount of time, I don't blame her). The epidural was administered, and it failed... only her left leg became numb (they think it was due to her spinal chord not being fully straight, and the epidural at the wrong point for her). Also, contractions were not getting close enough together for pushing to be effective and all of us were very tired (this is about at hour 20).

At around 3 in the morning, Alexis began to feel the need to push, with the nurse and midwife's instructions she did just that... for about 3 hours she did this and the baby just wasn't progressing.

Finally, after the heart rate dropped a bit too far for their comfort the midwife called in a doctor to assess things, within minutes the room was filled with nearly 15 people, a resuscitation team, a baby care team, a mother care team, plus since it was a shift change, backups for the that.

We had 2 and a half options, 1 vacuum, 1/2 forceps to increase the birth canal and help baby out (but the Dr. didn't like that idea for a few reasons), and the third, if the other two didn't work, emergency C-section... no one liked that.

So w/ the Dr's instructions on the vacuum process he told he had only three tries, and that if the third failed, we would have to go into a c-section.

Emma came out on the third pull! Praise JESUS.