The Whole Gory Story... Part 3

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been between posts. I suppose having a baby on your breast CONSTANTLY makes the time go quickly!

So, where am I? I've now been given the epidural and the pain is slowly fading away. Heaven! I was then told I had to be very careful to not damage the epi line in my back... but of course the midwife is then calling me over and over to move, "Jennifer! You need to move onto your left side," "Jennifer, I need to do a pelvic exam so I need you to move onto your back." WTF! How am I supposed to not damage my line if I'm constantly in motion? And of course, as the night wore on, they had to re-up the epidural, so I then lost any ability to move my legs to help people move me. The second dose of epi-drug made me totally immobile from the waste down. Poor Rob had to move me, shove me here, pull me there. Poor guy, he really was a trooper! That's one of the difficult things about being a larger woman on an epidural, it's much more difficult for people to move you, especially when you're a dead weight.

By now I have lost all sense of time. I know it's late enough that Rob can't go and get food because everything's closed, and all that's left of what I packed for him is trail mix. Ugh.

The epi made me want to sleep...since I couldn't feel the contractions, I might as well sleep through them, right? Well, I did that as much as possible, in between being forced to move. I think Rob even got a few minutes of shut eye. And I mean FEW. But you take what you can get, right? I think the worse part for me was when the midwife woke me up because the baby's heartbeat was dropping during each contraction. They had a doctor come in twice to take a blood sample from Jacob's scalp to check the oxygen levels. Both times they were in the safe zone (second time was borderline), so I didn't really worry.

I did my best to not worry. Instead I chose to have complete faith in my doctor. I think that may have helped because you never know what your stress can do to a baby.