Just a warning...this is pretty long and detailed!.
I measured small throughout my pregnancy but about a month before my due date it seemed that my belly had stopped growing. A follow up ultrasound estimated that the baby was only 4 pounds around 35.5 weeks so the remainder of the pregnancy was stressful and filled with two biophysical profiles a week plus regular weekly appointments. When I was told that they wanted to induce me at 39 weeks because they thought the baby would grow better on the outside, I was more than ready.
On 9/5 I went to the hospital to begin cervical ripening, hopeful that it would start labor so that I wouldn't even need the induction. Unfortunately after two doses there was not much progress so I was scheduled to get induced the following morning. When I arrived back at the hospital in the morning, the midwife felt that I was not ready for induction and started a third round of Misoprostol...and then a third several hours later. By the time her shift was over, we were completely exhausted and just wanted to go home for the night. I was about to get discharged when she saw something on the monitors that she did not like. I was put in bed immediately, strapped back onto the monitors and given an IV. It was shift change and the new midwife never even explained what had happened and what might be wrong. Somehow I managed to doze off for a little while and then painful contractions started. They were not too bad at first but one of them was really strong and long and I ended up vomiting a lot. Apparently the monitors were showing that the baby was fine and they were going to let us go home but after my episode they decided to keep us for the night. In the morning a different midwife went on duty and she was amazing. She was going to start another round of ripening but changed her mind after I described the contractions I was having and started the Pitocin instead, probably around 11am. At first it was not bad but the contractions picked up and I had to work to get through them. After a couple hours she checked me and I had only dilated one cm to a 2 but was now fully effaced. She broke my water, turned down the Pitocin and that's when the fun really began. I was having intense back labor and nothing was helping - I tried a ton of different positions and the shower as a last resort before asking for an epidural. After that was administered, I was checked again and was 6cm. The pitocin was turned off while I was getting the epidural and they never had to turn it back on because my contractions actually picked up. It was only about an hour or an hour and a half after I got settled from the epi that I started to feel some major pressure. The midwife finally came back and I asked her to check me and she could already see the head! I started pushing and the baby was out about 15 minutes later. We were technically team green (but I was pretty sure I saw boy parts on one of our many u/s) so DH announced that we had a boy and got to cut the cord after it stopped pulsing.
Baby Skip was born on 9/7/12 at 6pm at 5lbs 11.5oz and 18.5in long. He is a little peanut but healthy and growing fast! We are so in love with our little man.