Noah's Birth Story (as best as i can remember)

I was scheduled for an induction at 41 weeks 4 days (thursday the 7th), and went to the hospital at ten at nite to start on cervadil because I wasn't dilating on my own. However, my own contractions began that same nite at around seven o'clock (of course) and were coming between six and ten minutes apart, and lasting just 30 seconds. So after the finale of So You Think You Can Dance, hubby and I booted it to the hospital (never noticed before how bumpy the road is). I was checked, and was still only a half a centimeter dilated, so cervadil was inserted. By this time, my contractions were pretty painful, even if they didn't last very long. Well, to say the cervadil gave us a kick start would be an understatement. By midnite, my contractions were lasting a minute, and were so strong they took my breath away. But I was still only three centimeters. Soon, my contractions were back to back, with no break between, and were lasting a minute or more each. I've never hurt so much in my life. Yes, I cried. Yes, I howled. Yes, I said I wanted to die, and yes, I cried for my mother. I tried taking a bath to ease the pain, but it didn't help, and at 2:30am asked for the epidural. What a relief that was! Little did I know what was to come. Here's where it starts to get fuzzy, so hubby's noting details for me (and trying not to cry while he does, because he was scared sh-tless). 15 minutes after the epi, Noah's heart rate started to drop drastically. They thought it was because of the epi, so stopped it. His rate got a little better, so they started it again, along with vaginal stimulation of his head. It dropped again, so they stopped the epi, and started stimulating his head from the inside, and manoevering him from the outside too. Yanick says I started bleeding really badly. By this time (around four in the morning), the on-duty resident and another doctor were watching the monitors, and my obgyn was between my legs stimulating the baby, and there were four nurses running around. They gave me some oxygen, and took out the cervadil, thinking maybe thats what was causing the problem, and cleaned out my cervix with solution to clear away the chemicals. No go. So they kept on stimulating the baby, because a few times they actually couldn't locate his heartrate on the monitor. I remember hearing around this time them asking Yanick if he was okay, because he was really pale, and so I knew something was up. Realized that panicking wasn't going to help, so went into a little bubble of zen concentration, and tried to mentally contact Noah, to tell him everything would be okay. They decided to break my water. Didn't help. They put in a uterine contraction monitor to keep track of the action. Finally, they decided to try to re-inflate my placenta with solution, thinking that maybe breaking my water caused more distress to the baby. Nothing was helping. Finally, at 6:30am, after doing everything they could, they called for a "priority 2" cesarian (i'm assuming that means big time emergency), and at 7:26am, little Noah was born. One of the nurses told me after that she'd never seen anything like it, and even the resident came to say that I'd had it really really bad, and that he was glad we'd made it through. I had never realized until afterwards (while holding my pale shaking crying husband) how close we came to losing our boy. God bless all the doctors and nurses for all their hard work. My little angel is sleeping sweetly in his crib as we speak, and we have them to thank for it. He's the most amazing thing that has ever happened to us, and we've been in tears of joy off and on all day, just happy to be home, and to be a real little family. Thank heavens.