The epidural felt very lopsided, and I became quite anxious. I could not feel anything on the left side of my body, from my hips down. The right side, however, felt as though the epidural hadn’t even taken hold. I asked to roll onto my right side so that the drugs could perhaps drain from the left side to the right side. I started to curse the anesthesiologist, and became convinced he had done a poor job because of my irritating questions.
The monitor showed that my contractions had completely stopped. So instead of relaxing and sleeping, I became even more anxious. I had been in labor for almost ten hours, and the nurse said we’d have to start pitocin in the morning. I thought about starting all over again and thought I was going to die. Meanwhile, my left leg was so numb that I thought I was going to lose it—my mind and my leg.
At five o’clock in the morning, after not sleeping a wink, the nurse discovered that the way I was balanced on my side made the monitor not able to pick up my contractions. I was still in active labor, and was more than five centimeters dilated. That was good news!
By 8:00 a.m., I was eight centimeters dilated, and by 9:30 a.m., I was ten centimeters dilated and ready to push. By then, it felt as though I had “hot spots” in my stomach where the epidural wasn’t working. The pain was so intense that I was having trouble breathing, and the nurse had me use an oxygen mask.
As soon as I started pushing, my contractions slowed down dramatically. By then, the pain of labor seemed to have completely overtaken the epidural, but I was determined to push as hard as I could and finish the process. I was ready for my baby to enter the world.
The doctor introduced some pitocin into my epidural to speed the contractions back up. I pushed for nearly two hours, all the time requesting my husband to massage my left foot (which I couldn’t feel at all, and which was really freaking me out) and put ice in my mouth. At one point, after I’d pushed for an hour and a half, I asked the doctor whether there’s a point of no return. I worried that the baby just couldn’t come out, but that it would get too far for a C-section. She told me no, they could always do a C-section, but the baby was not under any stress, so not to worry.
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