Entry for March 26, 2007 – Labor and Delivery

9:00 AM: Doctor’s appointment – Amber’s blood pressure was on the high side, so the doctor recommended that we go ahead and start labor.
10:15 AM: Settled in the L&D room at the hospital and started IV.
Noon: Doctor checked on Amber, attempted to break her water, but wasn’t able to.
Amber is having contractions, baby monitor looks like everything is good.
3:15 PM: Doctor visited again, broke Amber’s water. Contractions still coming.
6:15 PM: The nurse checked her, and she is now a 3 and 50%. We put in an order to get an epidural.
8:00 PM: The epidural is in place and working nicely. Amber says, “epidurals are good”.
10:00 PM: Not much progress, still about a 3 and having regular contractions, but she isn’t feeling any pain. It looks like we are going to be here a while. Amber is hungry, but can’t eat real food. My job is getting more ice chips and popcicles.
Midnight: Progress is slow. Amber is at a 4-5 now. The doctor said to send the parentals home for the night because not much is going to happen until the morning. Amber says, “I didn’t think it would take this long.”
Tuesday 2:15 AM: Amber is feeling significant pain with contractions, had epidural dosage level adjusted. When the nurse checked her, she was at a 7, so she has moved quite a bit in the past little bit. The baby is still high up right now.
4:00 AM: She is feeling more pain with each contraction and now at a 9.
4:45 AM: The nurse says the baby is still a little high in position, says that the station is at 0, but needs to be 2 before we start trying to push. The epidural pump keeps alarming. First the battery needed replaced, then the fluids ran out. Amber is shaking a little, but they say that is normal. We tried to get some sleep. Amber says I was more successful than she was.
5:15 AM: Amber is fully dialated and the baby had started to decend. We had our first “push”.
7:15 AM: Amber has been pushing for for a long time and is very tired.