Rachel started having regular contractions beginning around 5:30am on Sunday. We timed the contractions all day but they averaged around 45 seconds and were spaced out by 8 minutes on average. During the night the contractions started to become 60 seconds long but they spaced out more to around 10 minutes. Monday morning we decided to go ahead and go to the hospital at 8:00am since Rachel had been having the minute+ contractions all night long even though they were not close together. Plus, Rachel had been bleeding some since Thursday 9/15/2011. She was also dilated 2cm on Thursday.
We got to the hospital and up into labor and delivery where they hooked Rachel up to a fetal heart monitor for the baby and a blood pressure machine for her. Rachel was dilated to 5cm at this point. Rachel and the baby received a good report so they took Rachel of the fetal heart monitor and Rachel continued to labor. In a half hour or so the contractions quickly increased in duration and started happening 3 to 4 minutes apart. The nurse checked Rachel’s progress and Rachel was dilated 7cm. This continued until 10:20 or so then her water broke. This is when things started happening really fast (and that’s not just me saying that the nurse said so too 📷). Almost immediately the contractions started happening one after another for 1 to 2 minutes and then she started having an urge to push. The nurse got the heart monitor back on and noticed that the baby’s heart rate had dropped and then checked the cervix which had not only dilated fully but the baby was already at station +1 or +2. Our doctor had not arrived yet so they grabbed one in the hallway (Dr. David Moore, great guy by the way). He confirmed the low heart rate and was concerned about it so he had Rachel go ahead and start pushing with the pushing contractions. After the first push we could see the top of the head and discovered that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck. At this time our doctor arrived and they decided to do an episiotomy because of the cord, low heart rate, the intensity of the pushing contractions, and Rachel had started to tear toward the urethra. So with the second push they did the episiotomy without local anesthetic. On the third push Rachel delivered our baby girl. They preformed the APGAR test in which Abigail scored a 9. So after checking Abigail and Rachel the doctors and nurses said both of them were doing fine. She was 6 pounds, 7 ounces.
So that’s the gist of what happened as best as I and Rachel can remember it. I was and am a little tired at the moment so some of the details are a little fuzzy.