Positive induction story!

If you’re like me and you wanted a textbook natural birth, I wanted to share my baby’s birth story to show that not all inductions end in epidurals and traumatic c-sections, and that you can have a beautiful birth that doesn’t begin as planned.

At 35 +5, I tested positive for Covid-19. I was feeling cold symptoms so I decided to take it easy. Later that night at 2:45am, I noticed a pool of liquid trickling down my underwear. I wasn’t sure what it was but was sick and tired so went back to sleep. Then during the day, another pool of liquid accumulated in my underwear. So I talked to my doula and called my midwife. I was starting to have extremely light period cramps. My midwife suggested I come into L&D. I quickly threw together a hospital bag “just in case”.

We drove to the hospital around 7pm that day. The midwife there decided to check me for different infections and to check if that liquid was amniotic fluid. She did not find any infections, but confirmed that I was in fact leaking amniotic fluid. At that point, we were already approaching about a day with very slow labor progression (contractions). She suggested we decide to move forward with inducing labor to avoid infection since my water had broke. I was 1cm dilated, 60% effaced.

I was very disappointed with this news, because I had this vision about my perfect, full term, unmedicated childbirth, and that’s not what this baby’s plan was.

So around midnight, I was admitted to a Labor and Delivery room and they started me on Misoprostol to soften my cervix. I wound up taking 3 doses altogether, 25mg every 4 hours. My doula arrived around the first dose, and she suggested we all get some sleep. I did my best to rest, and I found the contractions I was starting to have on Miso were very doable. I also started to have bloody show that morning. Around 1pm, I was 3 cm dilated, 90% effaced, baby posterior position but at 0 (meaning he was right at my vagina). Around 5pm, they decided to start me on 2mg of Pitocin to start dilating. This is when contractions started to get intense and I was not able to focus on anything else. They increased the dose to 4mg about half an hour later. These were quite difficult for me and I was moaning through them. Around 7pm, I start to feel nauseous, shaky, and started crying. Shift change so a new midwife came in and was very kind. She lowered the Pitocin, did a cervical check and I was 4-5 cm dilated, 90% effaced, +1 position (baby lower than vagina), and she said my amniotic sack was mostly in tact- she broke it for me to stimulate dilation. Over the course of the next hour, my contractions were difficult to get through, painful and intense, and I started to feel like I wanted to push. I started insisting that I needed to push, this gut instinct, and eventually my doula called in the midwife and her team rushed in. Within 15 minutes they had me laying on the bed, and I pushed my beautiful baby out in 3 pushes, only taking 5 min. My active labor was about one hour total. I was screaming throughout the pushing but it felt amazing to feel what my body was doing. I didn’t have any tearing, just two small lesions on my labia. One thing I had no idea about with pushing is the splash zone! Lol the team got splashed with blood and fluid. The first thing the midwife said was “here’s your baby!” As she put him on my belly. And then, “you did AMAZING! You can’t tell your friends about this, they will be so jealous!” The nurses were all in shock at how smooth the delivery went.

They immediately put my baby on my belly for golden hour. I was so freaking happy and proud of myself. I felt immediate relief but felt like something was still left. Then they delivered the placenta and I felt great, an overwhelming sense of relief. They took baby and his APGAR score was 8. Later the midwife said that she comes from a birth center background and that it made her so happy to see an unmedicated birth. She doesn’t see them very often.

I hope this gives you a little hope in your own journey that everything will be okay! Babies have their own plans and all we can do is roll with the punches.❤️