my experience with being induced

My son has been stubborn since day one. In the last few weeks leading up to his birth I had reached my wits end. I felt huge everywhere and was convinced that I could not grow anymore-I was wrong. A week before my due date, I began to feel nauseous all the time and overall not well. I went to the doctor and he gave me the worst news- I was only dilated half a centimeter, but was 70% effaced. My husband and I had tried everything to get this baby moving and nothing was seeming to work. The following Tuesday(I was due that Thursday) I was checked again and nothing had progressed from that point. The doctor looked at me and said the words I was dying to hear at this point- "Do you want to be induced?". I began to panic thinking- "why can't my body do this?" "Am I a bad mom for wanting him out NOW?". Ultimately my husband and I decided that this was the right way to go and I was scheduled to be induced Wednesday morning at 6 AM. When we arrived at the hospital I was both nervous and excited. They began everything by checking my cervix and then placed a pill inside by my cervix to soften it, this was supposed to help jump start labor and my body could take over from there. After placing this, they moved me into the delivery room where I would labor and eventually have my baby. The nursing staff was short handed that day, so I was given several different nurses. One who came in and placed my IV, but she was done with me around 8. The first part of labor was fine as I waited for my body to know what to do. By 11, nothing had progressed so my new nurse placed another pill. I was allowed 45 minutes of walking time and 20 minutes of being attached to the monitor during all of this. After the second pill was placed I began to have some pretty strong contractions. However, my contractions were happening so frequently the baby did not have much time to rest in between. Around 2:30 (my other new nurse) came in and saw my labor pains, she recommended me for my epidural so I could get some rest. The anesthesiologist was amazing- walked me through everything even though I was having contractions(and probably was not the most patient). After the epidural- things got much better. I was able to "enjoy" labor- if that is even a thing lol. My night nurse(was by far my favorite) came in and introduced herself. She made me feel so comfortable and allowed me to ask questions without feeling dumb. Throughout the night I became the anomaly of the labor and delivery ward. They couldn't figure out why my stats were all over the place. They gave me pitocin to help move things along- however this was shortly removed due to my oxygen levels dropping and my contractions getting too close together. I was placed on oxygen and at this point felt like they were going to say that I needed a C-Section. At 1 am they called my doctor who said to give it a few more hours and to watch the monitors closely. At 2 am my water broke and this moved things along pretty quickly. My doctor arrived around 4 am and said that I was dilated to 5cm, by 6 am I was ready to push. At 8:06am my baby was finally out- at 9 pounds 9 ounces. His large birth weight shocked everyone, even my doctor. With him being as big as he was, they were worried about his blood sugar levels( they are supposed to be above 46 and his were in the low 30s). I tried breastfeeding at this point to help bring those levels up, but it wasn't enough. They took him from me- just a few short hours after birth and placed him in the nursery to be placed on a glucose drip. He stayed there for almost 2 days before he was released back to me in my room. This was the hardest part for me to bond with him because he was so far away. We made it home and life has been challenging with a new baby, but something I wouldn't trade for anything.

- Alexa