Todd and I drove to the hospital so I could be induced at 5:30 a.m. on June 4. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew how the process would go and I had been wanting a c-section through the whole pregnancy. Because I felt like I owed it to myself and to my child to try to do things the conventional way, I chose to be induced instead of go through with the c-section.

We checked in to the hospital, I got changed, and the nurses started pumping fluids into me. Around 6:30 a.m. they started the pitocin drip to induce labor. I was at about 1 cm at 7:30, but was still about 75% effaced. Around 11:00 a.m. the anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural. The contractions weren’t horrible at that point, but the nurses thought I should go ahead and get the epidural while I was comfortable.

The epidural itself didn’t hurt at all. About fifteen minutes later, when the anesthesiologist started the Bolus drip, I started to fade. I got tunnel vision, I felt really dizzy, and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. The nurses took my blood pressure and it was down to 70/40. I didn’t faint, though. They started pumping more fluids into me to bring up my blood pressure and about an hour later I was feeling good again. I only got 20% of the usual amount of Bolus that is administered through an epidural.

Around 12:15, the doctor came in to break my water because it wasn’t breaking on its own. I had reached 3 cm and they told me that labor would start progressing more quickly if my water was broken. Holy cow. Breaking my water did not feel good at all, but even worse than the pain was having to lie around in my amniotic fluid all day long. The nurses were switching out my absorbent bed pads all day so I wasn’t really lying in it without relief, but it definitely felt like I was peeing on myself all day long. Who knew that there were 2 quarts of water in there?!

So, the rest of the day and night was just labor. The contractions weren’t terrible because I’d had the epidural. My blood pressure was kind of all over the place all day and I was starving. I started getting sick around 8:00 p.m. when my favorite nurse of the day started her shift. We seriously had the best nurse ever who did everything she could to make me feel better, encourage me, and relate to my experience. I was throwing up about once every hour, which is nothing for me if you remember what the majority of my pregnancy was like.

The doctor came in to check me around 3:00 a.m. and it was finally determined that I could push! The contractions weren’t horrible and I wasn’t going through any kind of torture, but I was so ready to be done with the process. It had been nearly 24 hours and I knew that the big  stuff was still coming.

I started pushing at 3:15 a.m. and pushed for over an hour. The pushing wasn’t that bad because I was so determined to get the baby out! I was using muscles that I hadn’t used since I found out I was pregnant and I was working as hard as I could. The doctor and nurses knew that he was big and were encouraging me as best they could. Right at the end of the pushing, the doctor told me that she was going to give me some “help” with the vacuum. I didn’t feel any of that at all. I also had to have an episiotomy. I won’t go into the details of the episiotomy on my blog because I’m still a Southern lady, but if you do have any questions please feel free to email me and I’ll give you lots of straight answers. I know that pregnant women are often scared because they feel like they aren’t given many details about what could happen, but I think you know by now that I’m not into holding back. But… there are just some details that I don’t plan to put out here for everyone to see.

At 4:39 a.m. on June 5, John Matthew Hudson Carroll entered this world and the doctor and nurses were laughing immediately at his size and the size of his big cheeks! Todd took the sweet boy to meet his grandparents who were praying right outside the delivery room. I laid there for about twenty more minutes while they stitched me up. I had a 4th degree laceration.

The theme around our house since the delivery has been, “I’d rather have stiches where I can see them.”

They brought the baby back to me and I got to feed him for the first time. Then they took him to the nursery to be weighed and checked out by the pediatricians. The nurses got me to stand up so I could move to the room where we’d be staying for the next few days, and about ten seconds later I fainted. I knew I was feeling dizzy, but I had never fainted before in my life. They determined that it was because I’d had such an extreme loss of volume. Lots of blood, water, and baby.

About three hours later, I was well enough to move to the room where we’d stay for the next few days.

My delivery experience had its ups and downs, but I’m so thankful that we’re both healthy. I’m still going through a tough recovery and will be for a long while. Because I have such large babies, I’ll be going with the elective c-section next time around. And now I can tell anyone who tries to convince me otherwise that they’re crazy.

But, I’m sitting here right now while my little man is hanging out in his swing, and I know that this face is totally worth everything I’ve been through and will continue to go through.