30 hours of ... "labor"?

Hooked up to the baby monitor!

 After we arrived at the hospital, they hooked Baby Wynne and I up to the monitor for a while.  They constantly checked my blood pressure and it was still slightly elevated.  Despite my hesitation, my doctor was set on having Baby Wynne arrive soon!

Even Daddy gets a wristband!

 At about 4pm, my doctor started the induction.  The start of an induced labor is a 12-hour treatment with cervidil, which is a prostaglandin which is supposed to ready the cervix and birth canal for birth.  So, they inserted this drug and then I had to wait 12 hours.  During this time, Ryan and I watched some TV, played some Yahtzee on his iPad, talked about the Disney trip we're going to take with Baby Wynne someday and just waited.  When I was allowed to (which wasn't often because of my high blood pressure), we walked around the maternity ward and took some photos near all the holiday decor!

 Around midnight, I sent Ryan home to get some sleep.  Now, some of you moms might disagree with me, but I thought Ryan going home to sleep was a good idea.  Nothing exciting was happening, the house is 3 minutes from the hospital, and I wasn't able to sleep very well (with the constant monitoring and the woman in the next room over screaming her way through labor), so I thought it would be a good idea if Ryan slept a bit!

The next morning, around 5am, the cervidil was removed and the doctor monitored Baby Wynne and me some more.  I had not progressed AT ALL!  No dilation, no effacement.  And Baby Wynne was still really high up, near my ribs.  Obviously, not ready to arrive yet!

But I was "contracting" a little.  At least, that is what they told me!  About every 3 or 4 minutes, I would get a sort of mild cramping.  I probably would have thought nothing of these contractions if I were at home.  There was a long debate about what to do next.  Another 12-hour round of cervidil or start the next drug (pitocin)?  Because I was contracting some, the doctor decided to give me the pitocin to see if we could increase the contractions and get the labor started.

Around 6am on Christmas Eve, the IV of pitocin was started.  At this point, I was basically stuck in bed because of the high blood pressure and so Ryan and my mom and sister-in-law Kelly hung out and tried to keep me company.  We watched football and talked about it being Christmas Eve!

I kept waiting for some crazy contractions.  But there was nothing.  I had contractions every 2-3 minutes.  They weren't very strong and I could still feel Baby Wynne kicking around near my rib cage.  It didn't seem that he was anxious to find his way out! 

At about 5pm, after more than 10 hours on pitocin, the doctor checked me again to see how far we were progressing.  You could tell the doctor was not excited as she reported my stats to the nurse.
Dilation?  "Maybe 1cm." (needs to be 10cm for delivery)
Effacement? "No." "Like 50%?" "No, like nothing.  Maybe 20%?" (needs to be 100% for delivery) 
Baby's position?  "+2" (needs to be -2 for delivery)

At this point, I knew my hope for a "natural" birth wasn't going to happen.  The doctor offered to put me on my pitocin if I wanted to keep trying.  I asked "Honestly, what are the odds of this progressing to childbirth?".  The doctor frankly told me "Not good.  We can do more pitocin, but it probably won't do anything and eventually you will end up with a c-section."

Ryan calmly asked the nurse and doctor to leave while we discussed what to do.  Honestly, I felt great and I could have "labored" for another 3 days!  But I understood that it wasn't going to happen.  I would just get pumped full of drugs, sit around in bed all day and Baby Wynne would still refuse to arrive!  And so, we arrived at a decision that scared me.  We were going to have Baby Wynne via c-section.