While we knew that if Missy's water really had broken the doctors would want us to have the baby within 24 hours to minimize the risk of infection, I also remembered that hospitals will generally send women who are not actively laboring home early. Even though I was pretty sure the hospital would end up sending us back home, "just in case" I put our car seat and our pre-packed labor bags into the car, and off we went!
Once we got to the hospital, though, it became clear that we wouldn't be going back home! The doctor wanted us to go into active labor, and soon, to try and have the baby within the 24-hour window.
I was kind of upset by this, because in my head, I was thinking that we wouldn't be anywhere near the hospital until we'd already labored for several hours, and Missy was just about ready to have the baby. Nevertheless, though, we did our best to get Missy to go into labor by walking around the hospital in the vicinity of our labor room, and having Missy take a shower. My mom also arrived to help us out -- she was a big help in keeping us calm and focused since things weren't exactly going to plan!
Missy ended up getting Oxytocin around 3:00am to get into active labor. After having the IV in for a few hours, this certainly got things moving, but it made the contractions a lot more difficult for Missy to handle. Up to that point, she had pretty much been cruising through them using the relaxation techniques that we'd learned in the Bradley Method class and practiced in the weeks leading up to the birth. Now, though, contractions were much more forceful and they came on a lot more sharply, which made it very difficult for Missy to get into her relaxed state before the contraction started peaking.
At around 10:00am, our nurse examined us and announced that Missy was 6 centimeters dialated. At the same time, Missy started having an extremely difficult time with labor; she threw up a few times, and felt really sick and in a lot of pain. Since we thought we might have a few hours of this ahead of us (thinking 6/10 cm dialed = 60% finished with labor), we weren't sure we'd be able to realize our goal of a labor with no pain medication.
However, we had learned about "transition", a 30 minute or so period of labor where things get very difficult for the laboring woman, immediately prior to the pushing stage (which is usually comparatively easier). Missy's suddenly having a much harder time when she was doing so great before was consistent with being in transition, so I encouraged Missy to stick it out, just in case our "60% done" estimate was not accurate.
And that did turn out to be the case! After 20-30 minutes of having a really difficult time, Missy announced she was ready to push! I ran out to the lobby to grab my mom, who had gone out a while earlier to greet some family members who had arrived at the hospital to await the new baby's arrival. When I got back, Missy really wanted to push, but the nurse told us to wait, our doctor was in the O.R. with another patient and not available yet!
Fortunately, between the two of us we convinced the nurse that Missy really needed to push *now* -- because she did, she couldn't hold back! -- and a resident doctor and the on-staff hospital doctor arrived. Missy pushed the baby out amazingly quickly, especially for a first-time mom, getting him out within about 20 minutes on the strength of just a few hard pushes.
I'm so proud of the effort that Missy made in getting our new son into the world! Despite things not quite going as planned, Missy brought little Elijah into the world very strongly and bravely. My gentle wife has some serious nerves of steel!
