After 36 hours, Harper Irene was born yesterday 2/1/14 at 41w1d! She was 8lbs 1oz.
I went in for the induction on Thursday night at 7:30pm. I was basically 0cm and 50% effaced. They started me on Cytotec and when they checked me around midnight I was around 1cm and having mild contractions. They couldn't give me another dose though, because the contractions were too close together. I was finally was able to get another dose around 4am. When the doctor checked me around 7am I was still around 1cm. My options were to go home and wait a few days, or get a dilation balloon catheter and start pitocin.
I chose to move ahead and so they moved me to labor and delivery. Once they insert the balloon, there is no stopping because of risk of infection. I had the balloon inserted around 12pm on Friday. The actual insertion of the balloon did not hurt that bad, but I was actually begging for the epidural for the next half and hour. It was like on non-stop contraction and an 8/9 on the pain scale. At this point I was only 1cm dilated, so they were like, sorry but there's no way you can have it. They didn't even really offer any other pain management options. During that half an hour I felt like I was going to die and just curled up in a ball and some how feel asleep. I felt much better when I woke up.
The point of the balloon was to get me to 3cm. This took 12 hours and the nurses warned me the these kind of inductions can take days. I was feeling pretty down about how painful and slow things were going. Things were moving really slow and I was in a lot of pain for these 12 hours because it was too early for the epidural but I was having contractions from the pitocin. The doctor woke me up around midnight and said they were going to remove the balloon and break my water.
Well, once they broke my water, the pace unexpectedly changed. They broke my water at midnight and allowed me to get the epidural not long after. I slept on and off for the night. The doctor checked me again at 7am and everyone was shocked that I went from 3cm to 8cm. My husband heard 8cm and shot up out of bed - with a deer in the headlights look! Then the new nurse checked me at 8am after the shift change and was like "the head is right there" this baby is coming! They ran around getting all the delivery stuff ready, in quite a hurry, and came back and allowed me to start pushing. 45 minutes later she was born. I had 2nd degree tears, but so far it has not been too painful.