Induction...fail

You read that right - my induction failed. I am back home, after spending almost 36 hours in the hospital. Here's how it all went:

Sunday morning, we arrived at the hospital at 7am. They finally checked me in and had me all hooked up by 8:30, and they started me on Cytotek to ripen my cervix. I went from 1.5 to 3cm dilated. I also had contractions that were less than 2 minutes apart, and they were unable to give me more Cytotek, even though they wanted to. So...fortunate or not, depending on your point of view.

At about 5pm, they started me on the Pit.o.cin drip, to be turned up every 30 minutes. I was still at 3cm, 75% effacement, and they couldn't break my water because they couldn't reach it. At 10:30 they had the drip up to a 10, which is halfway, but I still hadn't budged. My wonderful, cooperative cervix was still at 3cm. They called my doc, who told them to turn it off and let me sleep for the night. He thought maybe the receptors were overloaded and just weren't responding at all, and that being off it and sleeping for the night would help. When he had last checked me, however, I at least had SHOW going on.

Monday morning, at 5am, the nurse came back in to start the drip again, and this time they were going to be "aggressive" with it. Instead of turning it up only one notch every 30 minutes, they were going to turn it up two notches. Well...that sort of had the intended effect, if the effect was simply to make my contractions stronger. It did that, although I never took any pain meds because it was still in the "I can handle this" stage. My cervix, however, had an entirely different idea when it came to the Pit - and that idea would be "Pit? What Pit? I don't see no stinking Pit! Also, no one gets in and no one goes out, I don't care what you say." You guessed it - no change, even after another 7 hours on the drip. The hospitalist checked me at 11:00am and hinted strongly that I was going to be going home, without baby on the outside. After she left the room I burst into tears, telling Aaron that I didn't WANT to go home only to have to come back and do it again, and I was worried about so many things...of course, the lack of food for about 38 hours (at that point) with little sleep and constant pain probably contributed.

My doc arrived around 1pm to confirm - he was going to have to send me home. At this point I was on the max dose of Pit and had been for about 3 hours, and I was STILL at 3cm and 75%. My uterus is simply being non-cooperative and my child is joining in the protest. They just aren't ready. There isn't anything else they CAN do, other than a C-section, which...well, they don't do them as often as they used to and for good reason. It's major surgery, with it's own inherent risks. Women were apparently opting to go straight to a C-section instead of going through labor at all...and not for medical reasons. So nationwide, doctors are cutting down on performing them. Makes sense to me. Baby is fine, I'm fine (if very cranky and disappointed), body is fine (although not by the time *I* get done with it...mutter...mutter) and there's no REASON for the C-section. So...home.

I felt bad for my poor doc - he obviously didn't want to tell me I was going to have to go home, and was convinced I was going to go blog about what a horrible, mean doctor he was. Yes...horrible and mean for putting what's best for me above what I want. God forbid we all have doctors so mean, eh? I kept telling him it's not his fault, it's my body. This isn't the first time it's done the exact opposite of what we've asked it to. It took me 6 years to get pregnant - what makes us think it would be easy to get the child OUT? :)

By the time they made sure the Pit was out of my system and had me released, it had been about 41 hours since I'd eaten anything other than a few Jell-o snacks and apple juice. We got food on the way home, took a shower, and I crashed for about an hour (after updating everyone repeatedly on FB....). I feel a bit more human, but will be heading to bed shortly. Hopefully my body will launch itself into labor now that we got things going a little...but I really shouldn't say that, because then it won't!