A Mother's Moment

[greenfingers]

I'm sharing my story of "A Mother's Moment" to hopefully offer some comfort and perspective to others who may have had similar experiences.

I was at 38 weeks and 5 days when I went into labor unexpectedly while at work. My water broke, but no contractions followed at that point, so the hospital told me to get myself checked in before things progressed too far on their own. This was a bit of an emergency situation for me since my OB-GYN wasn't available yet; however, they managed to fit me into an appointment within about 2 hours.

They performed these initial checks and confirmed that I had indeed broken water but hadn't started experiencing contractions as expected. Due to this timing issue with my OB being busy initially, the doctors then recommended an immediate induction in order to minimize any potential risks that might have arisen if things continued unfolding without medical supervision for much longer.

 

[luciana]

I was induced at 1pm, but the contractions started very slowly and spaced far apart from each other. My doctor kept saying I was only at "1%" dilation, so they thought things were moving along just fine. I went home early and tried to rest but couldn't sleep due to constant pressure in my pelvis.

I returned to the hospital later, still dealing with those slow contractions that started around every 30 minutes or so - extremely comfortable as compared to the super intense ones you typically expect during labor. My doctor said it looked like I'd progressed through 'just' about another centimeter of dilation and they thought it would probably be around midnight when the baby arrived.

However, things took a turn for the worse, as my contractions continued to increase in intensity significantly after this point. The real pain began for me around 2pm; that's roughly four hours post-induction'.

 

[bubblyfish]

It sounds like your laborday went from expecting a long easy day to things suddenly changing and getting much more intense after the doctor said it would probably be midnight when baby arrived. Was it around this time you first started needing an epidural or did people suggest using one before this point?

 

[chickadee]

Before midnight, I actually started feeling quite a lot more intense pain after the doctor said it would probably be late night/early morning if baby arrived. They didn't suggest epidural before this point but afterwards several people told me they wish they had one earlier, which made us seriously consider it. However, given the progression and intensity of my laborday experience so far, I'd decided to see how things unfolded without epidural before deciding at midnight that maybe it was worth trying to get more pain relief on board since baby arrived much sooner than expected.