Thursday, Sept 22nd (40w5d)
At around midnight, I started having some back labor. I had had my fair share of BH contrax throughout the pregnancy....but this was the first of what I'd describe as painful, aching contractions felt mainly in my lower back/legs.
Around 2:30am....we decided to go in. We went to L&D and I was dilated to an almost 3.....but this wasn't real labor. Because I have had a previous c-section....once admitted to the hospital for labor I am stuck in bed and tied to monitors so they can constantly check on how the baby is doing. This means no walking the halls to "move things along" so since I wasn't far along yet.....back home we go. I took something to relax me and we were sent home to sleep. Michelle had come to stay on the couch while we went in...back home for us and back home for Michelle. False alarm. :-(
Friday, Sept 23rd (40w6d)
Dr appt at 10:50am, grab a bfast sandwhich on the way and head in. She and I discuss setting an induction date (she'll break my water) on Monday the 26th. She says I'm definitely 3cm and I had a few contractions in her office that took my breath away. Dr said she'd be SHOCKED if I made it to Monday. I got home and around noon.....labor started up again with a vengence. Poor auntie Katie was in the living room with the twins and I stayed in the bedroom trying to pack my bag, get ready, tie up lose ends with emails and text my friends to check to see if this is INDEED it. We called in reinforcements to help out with the twins (Auntie Karn to the rescue) and my mom packed her bag and started the drive down.
We got to the hospital around 3pm (brutal drive.....so uncomfortable) and I was almost to a 4. They ordered an epi and soon I was laying in bed, relaxing and laughing about my 3 hours of "tough labor". Distant memory!!! Ha
Aunt Kimmy rolled in with treats, my mom and mother in law came a few hours later and things were going perfectly.
We talked, laughed, watched 1/2 the movie "Bridesmaids" and just had a great time. We took guesses on baby's gender, weight.....what he/she would look like. We laughed with all the nurses and each time I got checked....I was progressing beautifully!By midnight, I was at a 9.
That's when the progress stopped. 12am-3am I started having the VERY uncomfortable and painful urge to push but couldn't because I wasn't progressed enough. Baby was at a +1 so not quite low enough and so we just waited it out. It was awful. The nurse came in every 30 minutes to check me and I was in tears everytime she left because I hadn't made any progress. I was REALLY uncomfortable. And getting tired. 
At 2am, they inserted an intrauterine contraction monitor to measure the intensity of my contractions. They pickec up that they were strong.....but not strong enough yet to really get me to a 10 and move the baby down.At 3am, the Dr came in and we went over our options:
a) stay like this. Keep waiting it out.....knowing that even when I did reach a 10..I'd have to wait to push until the baby was engaged enough because of my previous c-section. His guess....2-3+ more hours of this.
b) give me a teeny, tiny bit of pitocin to strengthen the contractions and then wait it out until the baby was engaged enough to push.
c) c-section b/c clearly something is slowing the progress (baby's size? positioning?)
We decided on option C. I couldn't go on like this for another 2-3 PLUS more hours and we weren't in favor of using pitocin since it can increase chances of uterine rupture with c-section scar. So we decided we'd given this a good effort and perhaps this just wasn't meant to be. They said they could have the O.R. booked, prepped and have us in there in 30 minutes so away we went. They upped my epi, Blake changed into scrubs and we were wheeled into an O.R. around 3:35am.
Then at 4:05am......we met her. Our beautiful baby girl....our BIG baby girl with a 14cm head circumferance, 9.8lbs of squishy perfection. And we were SO happy we opted for a c-section because this big babykins was MUCH bigger than we anticpated.Cute story about her gender....when they saw the head full of dark hair and commented on how BIG the baby was....we both knew it was a boy. On video, you can hear us talking about it being a boy. So when they pulled the rest of the body out and said "Dad, you want to call it" he looked at the baby sort of perplexed at the absence of the "male parts" because it was a boy. Or so we thought. We were both beyond shocked to find out this big baby was a baby girl!!!
