Our birth story - part I

I decided I should write this all out before I start forgetting details. Is it possible that I could actually forget parts of this memorable day? Let's see - where did I leave off? I think I last posted on Monday 11/17 that we had received a gel treatment and were home letting the gel do it's job. We were just three days overdue at this point, but wanted to get the labor going slowly and relatively naturally if possible. When we went in for a gel treatment, here is what would happen. After the nurse checked my cervix to see how much it had dilated and how effaced (thinned) it was, they put two monitors on my belly - one to monitor contractions and one to monitor the baby's heart rate. On Monday, I was having contractions, but I couldn't really feel them much yet - they weren't dilating my cervix much either. My cervix was dilated to 1 cm + a wiggle or almost 2 cm. They monitored the contractions and the baby's heart rate for a while and then put the Prostaglandin gel on my cervix to try to soften or "ripen" my cervix. Then they monitored the contractions and the heart rate for another hour or so before they sent us home. We went back in on Tuesday morning and received another gel treatment and were sent home for the rest of the day with instructions to come back that night for another gel or a suppository of the same hormone that would work overnight rather than just while we were there at the hospital. When they put the monitors on my belly on Tuesday evening, they saw that I was having pretty good contractions and they were pretty consistent. The nurse called Rita to tell her this and Rita decided that we should not to the additional gel treatment and instead we should go home and get a good night's rest and come back at 6am Wednesday morning (11/19). We decided that with the good contractions that were happening on their own, labor would start relatively easily once my water broke, so we decided to have Rita break my water Wednesday morning. (...to be continued...)