What a ride...

OMGoodness, I was gone from Wednesday evening until Saturday morning! Away from my darling hubby and boys for way to long, I was starting to fall apart! I have never been away from them for that long before. The reason for the separation...my bestest friend in the whole world was working on having her baby, forever! It was overwhelming, and emotional and really practically indescribable.

Her water broke Wednesday morning, and her contractions got going pretty good that night, but when her midwife checked her she was still only two centimeters dilated. She was having a home birth so we were all hanging out at her place. The contractions continued on and off again all night and she tried all sorts of horribly uncomfortable things to get those contractions going. The next day was the same thing, on again off again contractions. Thursday night she was getting pretty burnt out, and the midwifes were worried about the fact that the contractions weren't staying consistent and she wasn't dilating and her water had been broken for a while by then, so we all talked about it and my friend and her husband decided that if the baby wasn't born by the morning time, we would go to the hospital. She tried everything, she was such a trooper, but Friday morning she still hadn't dilated any further and her contractions had stopped so they packed for the hospital. I stayed behind with their daughter until later and got to the hospital around 10 am. They started pitosen and we all started helping her deal with the contractions and encouraging her again, hoping that this would be it. She took no pain medication so that she could be as mobile as possible and try different positions and do lunges and squats to help move the baby down. Then the baby's heart rate started to fluctuate a bit. So they backed off of the pitosen and it went back to normal. They tried two more times to get contractions going with pitosen, then at around 3:30 am the doctors came in and said that there had been three serious heart fluctuations and that they could not longer continue to allow her to labor and that she would need to have a C-section. They gave her 20 minutes to prepare! It was so sad and stressful. She had tried so hard and she was so frightened to go into surgery. We cried and prayed together and then watch her be wheeled out of the room and then waited. And waited. And waited. The room was so eerily quiet after she left it was nerve wracking. Finally she was wheeled back into the room around 6:30 in the morning, with a beautiful baby girl and a husband who could barely breath, because of everything that he had witnessed in those two long hours. She had complications during the C-section because of a fibroid in her uterus the size of her baby's head! That might have been why she wasn't dilating because the baby couldn't get around the fibroid, and the fibroid was pushing her cervix to the side. She lost so much blood when they were trying to sew her back up, because of the fibroid, that she had to get a blood transfusion. It was terrifying. It was also hard to see her in so much pain and so sad, because I had to have a C-section with my first baby and I know how hard it is, and how much you hurt afterward. It's also really hard to accept that you weren't able to have the birth that you wanted. I am so thankful though that her and the baby are okay now, and she will heal, and she now has that baby that she worked so hard for. I am so proud of her, and amazed by her strength!

All of this happening while I am pregnant though...a little terrifying to say the least...trying not to get myself to freaked out about it. After that experience I feel like I could sleep a week and still not feel rested, so drained!