Progress and Sleep

About two hours after starting the Pitocin, Sam is at 1cm! Progress at last!

It's close to midnight when they leave the room for us to try and rest. All I can think about it is the labor getting intense while we're both completely exhausted from the long day. As much as I want to get past this part, I really don't like the idea of going through the delivery this tired.

It's hard to sleep with the nurse coming in multiple times an hour to up the Pitocin or adjust the monitors.

Not this again...

At some point the nurse comes in and gives Sam an oxygen mask. Then comes back in a few minutes later and ups the IV drip. Then comes back again with the Charge Nurse who starts reviewing the monitoring data and interrogating our primary nurse. "What changed. What did you here?", she asked pointing to a spot in the tracking data. My mind immediately jumps to our scare with Miriam.

Thankfully, this time, the concern wasn't about a missing heartbeat. They were trying to figure out what had changed in the last 30 minutes that caused the baby to become less active. It was quickly narrowed down to Sam switching which side she was laying on. Sitting Sam up, and on her back, got the baby more active again. The nurses make some small talk with us and leave the room satisfied that everything is fine again.

Oh, I'm sure they were closely watching the monitors from their station. I certainly was watching the monitors in the room. For the next 3 hours I would jump awake every time the baby's heartbeat wasn't audible from the machine and watch the monitor to see the activity level. Every time, everything was fine.

Sleep

Sam seems comfortable. I think she's sleeping, or at least catnapping. I'm glad she's getting some rest. With how tired I am, I can't imagine how worn out she must be.

Sometime after 3:30am I actually fell asleep for real.