Clark's Birth Story: Pitocin

to induce clark's labor, i was given pitocin starting around 9am on october 4th. (they give you saline in your i.v., too, to keep you hydrated.) before she even started the pitocin, my nurse noted that i was having contractions every few minutes. i told her that i've been having contractions for weeks. the strange thing was that the external monitor strapped around my belly was noticing contractions that i wasn't feeling. i'd actually feel every third or so contraction, but it looked on the monitor like i was having contractions non-stop. the nurse said that is because i'm small and don't have a lot of fat on my belly, so the monitor could pick up every little movement my uterus was making.

once the pitocin started going, my midwife said she'd be going to her office to see patients and that she'd return after lunch. hopefully my labor would be going strong by then.

well, it wasn't. over the course of the morning, my nurse gradually increased my pitocin dosage. my contractions were never feeling any stronger than they did at home. which isn't to say that some of them weren't intense, but i knew it wasn't full-blown labor. they'd be strong for a while after the dosage was raised, then they'd sort of taper off, just like all of my false labor before the induction. i was getting kind of bummed out and thinking more and more that a c-section was imminent.

at one point i asked the nurse if we could up my pitocin dosage again, as i wasn't feeling the contractions anymore. she said that there was a hospital policy that you can't raise the dosage if there are 4 or more contractions in a 10 minute period of time. i said, "even though i can't feel the contractions? even though they aren't effective contractions?" she said that everything the monitor picks up counts.

my midwife returned around 2:30 to check on me. i told her that not much was happening as far as labor is concerned. she gave me an exam and sure enough, i'd only dilated another centimeter, from 4 to 5 cms. 5 hours and i was only 1 centimeter farther along. my midwife told the nurse to give me more pitocin and then they discussed the issue of the hospital policy. ultimately they raised my pitocin level up to 7 (whatever that means) and inserted an internal monitor into my lady parts in order to better monitor the contractions. apparently the internal monitor can tell how strong the contractions really are, whereas the external monitor was just showing whether or not i was having one. using the internal monitor would allow them to justify giving me more pitocin if the contractions were inadequately strong to help my labor progress.

the extra pitocin got my labor going, though. i was feeling the contractions for sure. i bounced on the birthing ball, stood by the bed and rocked my hips, and had husband rub my back to help alleviate the pain. the pain was strong, but still manageable. i must have labored like that for about an hour and a half, until 4:00. then the midwife gave me another exam, noticed that clark's head was coming down farther into my pelvis, and she made the decision that it was time to break my waters. my midwife told me that if we were going to have a successful vaginal birth, breaking my waters should make things start moving along much more quickly and that labor would get pretty intense once the bag of waters was ruptured.

everything seemed to happen really fast after that...