Pain...relief?

Up until about noon, I was able to weather the contractions pretty well. They were uncomfortable, sure, but I had a decent break between them.

By noon, the contraction monitor was scribbling ever increasing peaks, three in a row each time, with less and less time in between. I would recover from one, stand up to go to the bathroom, and be in the middle of the next contraction before I could get back to bed.

Jimmie sat with me through these contractions and held my hand as I whimpered and tried to breathe. His dad had prepared him that he would need to remind me how to breathe during this experience, and Jimmie had sort of laughed it off. Now, he's subtly stroking his thumb up and down the side of my hand, a slow rhythm that I focus on and try to follow with my breaths.

Even through all of this, I'm only 3cm dilated when the doctor checks me. But it's enough for an epidural. Let's give it a shot. Haha.

The anesthesiologist is about to rush off to an emergency C-section, but the nurse tells me that he'll stop by my room first to get the epidural done quickly. I'm grateful.

When I hobble out of the bathroom for the hundredth time that morning, he's setting up. I'm told to sit on the edge of the bed, hunched over as far as possible, and don't move. If I have a contraction, let him know, and he'll try to work between them. Okay.

He starts with the local, which is a little uncomfortable, but we can deal with it. It's not until he starts to thread the catheter into my spine that the real fun begins.

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I broke my leg. I remember sitting on the floor screaming in agony, unable to control my vocalization of pain. That was really the last time I've ever involuntarily screamed because of pain.

Until now. No one really prepared me for the excruciating feeling of wrongness when the catheter was inserted. Intellectually, I knew that the small tube could only be only a few centimeters into my spine, but I could feel it stabbing into the upper right side of my back, well away from where he was working.

It's all I can do to keep from running away from the pain. If Jimmie hadn't been standing in front of me, holding me, I might have leapt from the bed.

It takes two more agonizing tries before the epidural is in the right spot. I can sense the anesthesiologist move away from me. I'm still hunched over, crying from the pain of the hours minutes before, when suddenly there is POP. It's not so much a pain but an electric shock that startles me and makes me straighten so fast, I nearly knock Jimmie away from me, gasping. Then...a flood.

Oh. I think my water just broke. I guess I can check that off the bucket list, too.