Yikes...I had 20 hours with DD. I had had a nagging ache in my stomach all evening, but not real contractions. Once I started having twinges pretty regularly, we started timing. So we called, they came, I was only 3 cm. Then they came back a few hours later...still 3 cm. And again a few hours later. After about 10 hours, they let me go to the hospital because I was begging for an epidural, but then I had to wait for the anesthesiologist because it was too early in the morning and he wasn't there yet. I got the epidural and I had about 2 hours of bliss in which I felt nothing, so I took a quick nap, and then they came back with a vengeance. But after 17 hours, I hadn't dilated past a 3 even though my contractions were pretty much right on top of eachother. They gave me pitocin and came back an hour later and I was suddenly at a 9. It took an hour of pushing to get her out...she was 9 lb 4 oz.
With DS, it was something like 6.5 hours. They tell you to call when the contractions are about 3-4 minutes apart, which was at about the 3rd contraction for me. We called, they came and I was at a 3. I thought...here we go again. They sent me straight to the hospital this time, and by the time we got there, I was at a 6. They wouldn't give me any pain meds because it was going so fast that they didn't have time to monitor his heart rate and such...they have to monitor for at least half an hour before giving you anything. My contractions were right on top of each other so I was getting no rest between them, but only about a 3rd of them were doing what they are supposed to do. They put me on my side and DS's monitor went crazy...he was in distress. So they put me back on my back, gave me pitocin and I don't know if they were even done putting it in my IV when they let me push, and it took 4 minutes. He was 10 days late, but once he decided to enter the world, he sure didn't take his time about it. He had the cord wrapped around his neck, though and he was blue. In all his hospital photos, he still had blue hands. His face turned pink within about 10 minutes, but his little hands looked like smurf hands for at least an hour.
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