Life has definitely been a little crazy the last couple weeks being a mom to four, but I thought I would take a few minutes while the baby is napping, and the other kids are engrossed in a movie to write out Madison's birth story.
On December 18th at 9am I went to my last OBGYN appointment. I was 37 weeks and 5 days, and had been having lots of random on and off contractions for days. At my appointment my doctor informed us I was dilated to a 4-5, and since we live 4 hours away, he didn't want to chance it, so he sent us to the hospital.
At the hospital they started me on pitocin around 10, and my doctor came to break my water a little after noon. After a few hours of contractions I told Mike I thought I could handle not getting an epidural, because my contractions were registering pretty strong on the monitor and they weren't intolerable to me. Mike's response was to say "I know you could handle not getting an epidural, but do you really want to go with out it?" It wasn't too long before I was eating my words. The pitocin started kicking my butt. It got to a point where my whole body was shaking with each contraction because they were so intense, and I told Mike I changed my mind. It was close to 3pm by the time I was able to get the epidural...and I had to get it twice because the first time she put it in it went into a vein...it was not pleasant. At first the epidural only worked on my right side, the anesthesiologist came back in, gave me a shot of some other medicine through the epidural, and a little while later it started to numb my left side, but it never did take away the pain completely, and I felt a bit more than I ended up wanting to.
After the epidural I was able to relax more, and watching my contractions on the monitor I noticed they were getting less strong, and further apart, which worried me. One of my biggest fears is ending up with a C-section, and I was honestly afraid that was what was going to happen. The nurse came in to check me because she had noticed the baby's heart rat dropping a little with each contraction, and I expressed my concerns to her, she said I didn't need to worry, that my contractions were not following a normal pattern, but my cervix was still changing, so I didn't need to worry about ending up with a c-section.
A little after 4 I started feeling a lot of pressure and asked the nurse to come in and check, I was at a 10, and she told me not to push, that they were going to get a hold of my doctor. My doctor was apparently at his office in with a patient, so I had to wait a little while (which seems like an eternity to a woman in labor being told not to push). Once he arrived it only took about 5-10 pushes for little Madison to be born.
We had kept her gender a surprise the whole pregnancy, and I can tell you it was a pretty neat experience not knowing what she was until the doctor held her up for me to see. I felt so much love for that tiny baby girl Heavenly Father had blessed our family with again.
Madison Reese Campos was born on December 18, 2012 at 4:28pm, weighing 7lbs 6oz and 20 inches long. We feel so blessed to have her as part of our family.
