Journey to and Through Motherhood: World's Longest Delivery (2/27/09

So, when I last left you, I was getting ready to go into the hospital to have labor induced. I was told by my OB that I was fully effaced and about 2 cm dilated. I assumed when I went in, I would immediately receive Pitocin but I was wrong.
I checked in at 7pm on Friday, 2/27/09 and was brought to my room at 7:30pm. My wonderful friend, Carol, met us at the hospital as she volunteered to be a labor coach for me and my own personal massage therapist throughout. The doctors decided that they wanted to give me Cytotec which is a pill they insert into your cervix that is supposed to help ripen the cervix. I thought I was fully effaced but they thought I had a little ways to go still. Plus my cervix was located quite posterior and they wanted it to move more forward. With the Cytotec, I had to lay still for an hour then wait around for 3 more hours for it take effect. Then they would reevaluate and decide if they wanted to give me another dose, up to a maximum of 6 doses. I got my first dose at 8:40pm, around the time my parents arrived. The 5 of us spent a long restless night and boring day where I received 5 doses of Cytotec. I was pretty sore from having to lay still in the uncomfortable bed for almost 24 hours. I could not get up and move around much because they had the fetal monitor and contraction monitor on me the whole time and every time I moved, the fetal monitor lost its signal so the nurse would come rushing in to reposition it and me to get the signal back. The Cytotec gave me cramps and I was having occasional contractions but was not progressing at all.

me wearing the monitors on my giant belly:

biding the time with my labor coaches Carol and Paul:

I received my 5th dose of Cytotec at 7pm on Saturday, 2/28/09. At this point, I still had not dilated or effaced any more. They decided then to insert a balloon catheter into my cervix to put pressure on it and start Pitocin. They put the catheter in at 8:30pm. Very shortly thereafter, at 8:45pm, my water broke. I was happy because I was finally making progress. They started the Pitocin at 10:50pm. By then I was getting really uncomfortable with back labor. It didn't help that I was still not allowed to get up and move around. I was given pain killers a few times to help with the horrific back pain. Meanwhile, they were concerned because I had a headache and developed a fever so they were worried that I may be getting preeclampsia. My test results came back okay and I was already on antibiotics due to being strep B positive but they bumped me up to stronger antibiotics due to the fever. Finally, at about 10:50am on 3/1/09, I was given my epidural. I was only dilated to about 3.5cm. My fever wouldn't get under control and I ended up developing chorioamnionitis which is a bacterial infection of the fluid and membranes surrounding the fetus. Both Lily and I were becoming tachycardic and I felt like crap. I was switched from an external fetal monitor to an internal fetal monitor at which point they discovered that the balloon catheter was not up against my cervix but pinned against Lily's head. Poor baby! They deflated and removed it since it wasn't helping anyway.
Finally, at around 6:30pm, almost 48 hours after checking into the hospital for labor induction and about 22 hours after my water broke, I was still only dilated to 5cm. I had been at the maximum dose of Pitocin for some time and my back pain was getting really bad again as the epidural had worn off from full strength. I had a wonderful nurse for this shift who was getting ready to go home but first she said we needed to talk about my options. My immediate response was, "Give me a c-section, I am ready to get her out!" The doctors came in and agreed as that was the plan they were coming to present me with as my labor had stalled, I was only halfway dilated, and the infection meant that Lily needed to come out sooner rather than later. I gladly signed all the consent forms and we were suited up for the OR. I was just so happy at this point that it was almost over and I would soon get to meet my baby. I was exhausted from being in labor for 48 hours with no sleep and no food.

They took me into the OR pretty quickly and after turning up my epidural to a surgical dose, they let Paul in. He was queasy about the whole deal and made sure that he didn't peek over the drape. It felt so odd to feel all the pressure of them pulling on my organs! Lilia Christine Rysso was delivered at 7:30pm. She was 7 lbs 12 oz and beautiful. They cleaned her up and brought her over to say hi to us but then they had to take her away to the neonatal ICU for 2 hours to receive antibiotics due to my infection and to make sure that she was not septic from the chorioamnionitis. The sewing up part of the surgery did not feel so hot. There was a medical student in the surgery that the surgeon kept asking questions about what she was doing and why so between the blow-by-blow report of what was happening to me and the fact that I could see it all being reflected in the light above my head, I quickly grew nauseated. They kept asking me if I was okay as my blood pressure was only about 80/50 throughout the surgery and I lost a ton of blood, apparently almost enough to require a transfusion. I kept saying I was fine then suddenly I yelled, "I'm going to throw up," turned my head away from Paul, and projectile vomited all over. Ick!

Paul and I getting ready to head into surgery:

I was freezing in the OR so they wrapped me up like a mummy:

finally Lily is here!

After surgery, I had to go to the recovery room for a while. Carol stayed with me in the recovery room and after about an hour, they brought Lily in. Since there was no one else in there, they let my parents and Paul come in so everyone could meet Lily. By then it was almost midnight. We were all so tired but so excited that the drama was over and that we could finally enjoy my beautiful baby girl!

Lily meets Grandma Christine whom she got her middle name from: