My frustrating Saturday

My parents came to the house at 5 and took Arianna to spend the night with them - I knew we'd be going to the hospital at some point that night.

I decided to labor at home until I 'couldn't take it anymore' - a sign that the contractions were strong enough to put me in active labor. I sat on the birthing ball for a while, took a nice bath for a while and DH and I took a nice walk around the neighborhood. After my bath about 8 PM the contractions had slowed to a crawl so I figured we were 'done' for the night. DH had food poisoning from a cookout we'd gone to that day so he was throwing up all over the place and by 9 the contractions had me really tired so I just looked at him and said "let's go to bed as we may be up early". He surprisingly agreed.

I woke up at 10:40 with lots of pain - I was really feeling it now and had a hard time talking through it - surely this was it! I got hubby up and called my doula and started packing the car/getting dressed.

We got to the ER at 11:50 and true 'full moon' fashion it was packed. I got through registration and triage and sat down. Hubby was still not feeling good but I needed to walk around with Tina (my doula) so he stayed with our bags while we walked the halls for about 15 min. They called us back and got me into a room to get the baby monitored and get an exam. Boy do contractions hurt when you have to lay down through them - I don't know why women do that without an epidural! I ended up standing next to the bed for a long time doing the strip because it really hurt to lay on my back. Then the resident/attending came in to give me my exam. Apparantly my doula knew her very well and was excited she would be the one doing my exam because she could 'fast track' me upstairs to L&D if needed.

I was 100% effaced, which was AWESOME, but only 1 cm. dilated (not awesome). So she told me to get up and walk around for two hours and see if that helps any. The scar tissue from the cerclage was going to make dilation pretty impossible - she even tried to break it up for me (ouch!!).

So I diligently followed orders - lots of walking with Tina and lots of contractions - eventually they were right on top of each other with no break in between and it was really frustrating but, if I do say so myself, I did very well despite no pain meds. They were really strong now and Tina said I should get examined because she could tell by the change in contractions that I'm further along.

4 AM I get another exam and there is no freakin' change. Not even a half a centimeter! I couldn't believe it! The the worst news came in.

They have no beds. With contractions showing up on the monitor at every minute or less they couldn't just send me home but they had no where to put me but in the ER on the WORST BEDS IN EXISTANCE and I really couldn't stay laying down - really, back labor sucks when you have to stay on your back.

So they gave me terbutaline and sent me home... after I'd labor hard for more than 24 hours they were giving me drugs to stop all my hard work and sending me home simply because they don't have a bed. WTF?!!

So its noon now, we're finally up and I'm eating something for the first time in 24 hours (I don't get hungry in labor) and incredibly upset about the turn in events. The worst is that I know we'll be back there again tonight playing this dance again... I have to go through those contractions again and hope they have a room for and hope that I get a sympathetic doc who will break up my scar tissue allowing my cervix to open up. All the docs I've seen have said the same thing - once the scar tissue breaks up I'll go from 1 - 6 fairly quickly. I like the sound of that, just wished it would happen sooner than later.

I kinda wish my doctor was on last night - when she took out my cerclage on Friday we talked about the size of the baby and what my cervix looked like and she told me to 'do everything I can' to get this kid out now... so that's what I'm trying to do. Just wish that I didn't have to seemingly fight them on it.