I want to finish thr rest of the birth story before we get too far.
Eventually, the nurse told me that we were going to induce because sending me home would probably just result in the later development of preclampsia. Since we were already past the due date, inducement wasn't the worst choice. They walked me down the hallway to a very large birthing room. I almost gasped. "wow, this is beautiful!"
Nurse: "Yes, it is, isn't it. This is our largest room, we call it the ballroom, since it's so large."
me: : "Well, I feel really lucky that we get to have it."
By this time, Dan had gone home to grab the birth bag and other stuff (Food! Movies! And letting the doggie outside) . I sincerely did believe that no matter what happened, I would have time to go home and get my stuff and pack a few things in it. Wrong-o. :) I went straight from work, as mentioned before, which also resulted in my car being stuck in the parking lot near my office.
At this point, the nurses warned me that inducement would take a long time. It could be 3 days, they said. I agreed. Since I wasn't dilated at all, and only 90% effaced, there was a lot to do, naturally.
Please note: if you don't want to read about birth, the cervix and what-not, skip out now!
We used cervi-pro to begin the dilation. I was given morphine via IV (They said it would be like a cocktail, which was exciting. "I haven't had a cocktail in nearly 9 months!" Which of course, isn't entirely true, I had a few sips of alcohol the whole time)
Then they used (for lack of a better term) the "cervical gun" to begin the dilation process.
Eventually Dan came back--stressed and hurried. He was trying to get everything and do everything without forgetting anything. Since I was on a morphine drip (I really didn't know this would be necessary during dilation, but ok...), I was also connected to the fetal monitors. Dan and I settled in for awhile and began watching a tv show while we waited. The nurse was even kind enough to angle my bed so I could watch Firefly on the DVD.
And thus began our long night of fetal monitoring.
