All of a sudden I had an entourage ....

Dr Greenburg came in to check on me and Darlene, RN, told her about the shivers. Dr Greenburg was thrilled. And everyone was right, after that things happened very fast.

I started feeling more pressure in my low back and in my bottom. No more cramping or contractions in the front of my belly but the pressure in my bottom was really uncomfortable. Back labor sucks. Darlene checked me and I was 6cm. Ok, that's something. I felt a little better about making some progress and she left the room to let me try to rest a little before the next check.

At around 8:00 I pressed my call button and Darlene came right in. I told her the pressure was starting to feel like pain. Tolerable, but it was definitely pain and I wasn't supposed to feel pain. She gave me a boost of my epidural. I'm so glad I called her when I did because VERY VERY quickly, before she left the room, that pain was intolerable. I couldn't hold still and started to hyperventilate. I was trying to breath through it and I couldn't breath at all. My O2 sats got down to 77 and Darlene put me on oxygen. I was laying on my side and Brian was eye level with me at the side of the bed holding my hand, trying to calm me down and regulate my breathing. He was amazing. He kept kissing my forehead and telling me what a great job I was doing, that Baby Girl was almost here. He was so encouraging and loving. I could not have done this without him

The epidural boost didn't touch the pain and I couldn't understand why I was feeling it. At one point I was actually crying because it was so awful. My nurse explained that they boost the epidural 4 times and then they call the anesthesiologist to give me more directly into my back.

Darlene checked me. 8cm. She called Dr Greenburg and before she got there Darlene checked me again. 9.5cm with a cervical lip. Dr Greenburg walked in the room and got that update. The anesthesiologist followed right behind her and injected me again. The NICU team and a respiratory therapist followed him.  Darlene said "just a little more, you can't deliver with that cervical lip." Even though it had only been 10 minutes, I told her to check again. Trust me, check again.