John Angus

Well the marathon started on Wednesday morning, I was having consistent contractions so we called the doctors office and they told us to come in, only to have us walk around for 4 hours, come back to the office and then get sent home. We went home and I tried to sleep until about midnight when I could no longer get comfortable because the contractions were getting to strong and he apparently had his head on a nerve in my back making everything very uncomfortable.
2:30 AM I woke John up told him we had to go. Contractions in the car were every 4 to 5 minutes making a long car ride. Got to the hospital got hooked up to the monitor, waited forever for the on call dr to look at the read out from the monitor. The minute we got to the hospital the contractions became irregular. Of course it was my doctors day off.
6:30AM on call dr says contractions are strong enough just not consistent enough, go home. I'll admit I almost started crying at the thought of the ride home. Of course the contractions started up as soon as we got in the car. I tried to sleep in the car but was awaken every time I had a contraction.
8:30 AM John decided to go to work and at this point neither of us had any idea of what labor was supposed to be like since nothing was ever consistent enough or strong enough.
All morning I spent trying to get comfortable but NOTHING helped. I used to consider myself a pretty tough person but my back hurt so bad I was rapidly turning into a pansy. I talked to my doctors nurse several times over the course of the morning, she was furious that they made me go home and convinced my doctors partner to see me since I was having back labor so bad because his head hadn't quite turned the right direction. He agreed and told me to come back to town.
2:30 I called John home.
3:00 We depart once again for Helena, making this trip literally Hell, every contraction made me want to cry uncle and get it over with. By the time we got there I would have let them do a c-section just to get rid of the pain.
4:00 Dr Haye sees me, agrees to admit me. Telling me that he would probably start pitocin to make the timing more consistent.
4:30 Nurse gets us settled into room, hooks me up to monitor for 20 minutes, then fills up the "awesome" jacuzzi tub, and tells me to sit in it for an hour. I was thinking it would give me some reprieve from the pain in my back and intensity of the contractions. It did make me feel better but the jets of water kicked it up a notch and made things really kick into gear. Since baby's head still hadn't moved when I got out of the tub I was instantly in pain again. They gave me an IV, started the pitocin on the lowest dose. After maybe a half hour I made them shut it off and call the anesthesiologist. At this moment I officially acknowledged that I was no where near as tough as I thought I was, slapped the pansy sticker on my forehead and begged for drugs.
The anesthesiologist Dr. O'Connor showed up, quickly fixed me up, reassured me of my fears of allergic reactions, with the fact that he had drugs to counteract any reaction I may have had. He was my new best friend. While he waited to monitor me after the epidural was in place he asked where we were from, after finding out we grew up on ranches, he reassured me that he eats beef, and then proceeded to tell me his son is a vegetarian and how disqusted he is with him.
The epidural started to work almost instantly and I tried to sleep. John was finally able to relax and we waited. Several hours pass by, I took several cat naps, John took a long snooze, and we waited. At this point I could only watch the contractions on the screen, as I could not feel them. Around midnight Dr Malaney (the currently on call dr) came into see me and broke the water. Within minutes I entered the transition faze, at which point I started to have feeling again, despite me pushing the button on the pump to deliver more anesthetic, I could still feel the contractions through the drugs. I can't imagine how much worse they would have been without it though.
1:45AM Finally time for the dirty work. The nurse (Tai) calls Dr. Malaney.
2:00AM Dr. Malaney arrives (I will leave the gory part out for those of you who may be weak stomached)
2:43AM John Angus enters the world kicking and screaming. 7 lbs 5.8 oz and 20 inches long. Today is July 16, 2010. 26 hours of labor and I finally got my reward.
He was perfect, John cut the umbilical cord and they placed him on my chest. He instantly stopped crying and curled up on me. A tear dropped from my eye and John hugged us both.