Child Birth is Unpredictable-Ryan's Mama

I always imagined that my water would break, my husband and I would look at each other with nerves and excitement and then we'd time contractions at home for awhile, drive to the hospital when it was time and our beautiful baby would be born a few hours later. That's just not the way it worked out!

Instead, my OB really pushed me to schedule an induction at 39 weeks. I wanted to try to go into labor naturally. And though I'm not opposed to epidurals, I wanted to see if I could do it without.

I show up at my scheduled induction and guess what? I'm having contractions about 5 minutes apart! Pretty good, right? Problem is that they're so mild that the doctor orders Pitocin anyway. I went from mild contractions about 5 minutes apart to extremely intense, very painful contractions about two minutes apart in a short 20 minutes.

When they broke my water, I got the epidural. The pain was crazy and the epidural seemed to really make them bearable. I could still feel each one but they weren't too bad...at first! And then the nurses had me turn on my side and the next contraction hit. It was way more painful than anything I'd experienced to that point. In just 3 hours, I'd dilated to a full 10 and was ready to push. An hour and 23 minutes later, that beautiful baby boy was here! He had such a conehead and a giant purple bruise from pushing against my bone. The epidural never worked and so I had the feelings of a natural childbirth but wasn't drugfree.

I found out after the fact that I have such a slight curvature in my spine that the typically used epidural space won't work for me! With my second child, the doctor had to take the first epidural out and move it down further on my spine. It still didn't work completely but it made my delivery bearable. Honestly, it made my second delivery a joyful, easy event where the first was stressful and a little traumatic!

It just goes to show you that pregnancy, labor and delivery and babies are so unpredictable. And that each one will be different.