Mechanically Open

Right at the promised time, the new doctor came in and prepped us for the balloon.

"This tube will be inserted, we'll inflate a balloon on the end of it inside of the uterus, and we'll attach a weight that will apply gentle pressure until the cervix opens to 4cm"

attach a weight, Seriously!?

He did exactly what he described. And it was pretty cool, in a mechanical way.

The tube being flexible made it a little bit of a challenge for him to get it inserted. Sam was a trooper. I could tell that it hurt like hell, but it wasn't anything near what she went through when they broke her water.

And there was a nice surprise. She was already dilated to 3cm! The balloon only has to open up 1cm more.

Once the balloon was in, it was inflated, and they ran a long piece of tape from the end of the tube, along the length of the bed, over the end of the bed and hung a 500cc bag of IV fluids from it. Attach a weight indeed. I would have taken a picture if Sam would've let me.

The doctor let us know he's seen it take 10 minutes for the balloon to pass, but he's also seen it take 5 to 6 hours. We tamped down our expectations given that everything so far has been the upper limit of the expected.

The doctor leaves and nurse works on getting the Pitocin started. We all realize we forgot to ask the doctor if Sam can have food, so the nurse hurries out the door to try and catch him before he leaves.

Sam and I are talking about the weight and how the insertion wasn't nearly as bad as we had expected. She starts wincing from the pressure/pain of the balloon doing its work. We talk through it.

All of the sudden, we hear something fall on the floor. "Was that the bag?", Sam asked. I move to the end of the bed and, Yes! It was the bag. But, it had disconnected from the tape, the balloon didn't come with it.

I'm about to reattach the bag to the tape when Sam says we should probably call the nurse. While I'm looking at it, debating whether to just do it or not, Sam has called the nurse and when the nurse asks what is needed, Sam starts to say something, but stops, and has a very interesting expression on her face.

"It....I think it's coming out. Yeah, it's definitely coming out", she tells both me and the nurse on the phone. I burst out laughing from the expression on her face and the way she's talking. "It's a very weird feeling".

By the time the nurse came in the room the balloon had already fallen out. The nurse disposed of it and we all laughed about how fast that was considering how slowly everything else has gone.

The nurse is starting the Pitocin now, and the doctor is going to call in an hour now that he knows the balloon did its job.

I can't believe something actually went better, and faster, than expected.