I was over a week past my September 10th due date. My doctor finally scheduled me to have my labor induced, but I went into labor naturally 2 days before that. On Saturday September 20th 2003 I woke up around 7:20am with some abdominal pain, which I thought was gas pains. It didn't feel anything like the Braxton-Hicks contractions I had experienced over the past few weeks, it felt more like intestinal pain. The pain got so bad, my husband Ben woke up from hearing me moaning in pain. He asked what was wrong, and I told him it was very bad gas pains. He suggested I try to go to the bathroom. That didn't work. I began to think it might be labor, so I started to time the pains. They were about 5-6 minutes apart. I went downstairs and started walking, which made the contractions suddenly 3 minutes apart. I ate half a bowl of cereal, figuring I wouldn't get the chance to eat later. Then I called up my doctor's office. The doctor on call was Dr. Chai, the only obstetrician in the office I hadn't met before. She said to go to the hospital. So I took a very quick shower, got my bags, and Ben drove me to the hospital. They wheeled me to Labor&Delivery and hooked me up to a contraction monitor and a fetal heartrate monitor. It was amazing to watch my contractions shown on the print out. The doctor checked me and said I was only 1 centimeter dialated, but they decided to let me stay, because I was so uncomfortable from the contractions. The next time the doctor came in to check my cervix, I felt her put something plastic inside me. I asked what she was doing, and she said she was breaking my water. I was shocked she hadn't even told me what she was going to do, until it was almost over. After that I felt a continuous trickle of water with movement or contractions, but never any huge gush. She said I was 2 centimeters at that point. The doctor then said she would hook me up to pitocin to increase the intensity of my contractions. I asked if I could wait and see if my contractions would progress on their own, but she said that since the water was now broken, waiting for a long time could increase the risk of infection. I didn't argue, and they hooked me up to pitocin. I had planned to try to not use any narcotic pain medication, and simply wait for the epidural, but the pain proved to be too intense after awhile. So they gave me half a dose of a painkiller in my IV, which I had never heard of before. When the pain continued to intensify, they gave me the other half of the dose. They increased the amount of pitocin drip to 3 times as much, and the contractions became unbearable. I used lamaze breathing simply as a way to try to keep from screaming. Finally, it reached a point where the pain was so bad, I began screaming with each contraction. The nurse ran in and asked me to use breathing to try to control the screaming. I was begging for my epidural, but they said there had been an emergency, and the anethesiologist was busy with the emergency. Ben helped me to breathe through the contractions, until the anathesiologist arrived. When she showed up I think I said something like, "Thank God!". I was only 2 to 3 centimeters, but they gave me the epidural anyway. I didn't feel any pain from the numbing medication injection. Getting the epidural wasn't very painful. It was more like a strong pressure. I think it hurt much less than getting the IV. Once it was in, I had instant relief! The next contraction felt like my earlier weaker labor contractions, and I could easily breathe through it. After that, the next few contractions only felt like pressure. Then I felt nothing at all, and didn't even know when I was getting a contraction! I could still move my legs, but they felt numb. The rest of the labor was a breeze. I was talking with my family, like I wasn't in labor at all. Then I tried to sleep, but I guess I was too excited to be able to fall asleep. Time went by quickly, and within a period of one hour, I jumped from 4 centimeters dialated to 8 centimeters dialated. An hour after that, I was 9 and a half centimeters dialated and ready to push.
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