Part I is here.
Her rest was short-lived, though, as the contractions began coming on closer together, and more intensely. Even though the Ambien was powerful, before long, Rose was unable to sleep between them; soon she was in severe pain. This seemed like the first stage of labor. She wasn't going to need an induction.
As I recall, at about three a.m., due to the pain Rose was experiencing, the world's least gentile nurse decided she should check to see how dilated Rose's cervix was. As Rose cried in pain, the nurse guessed she was all the way dilated, which was kind of shocking since it seemed that only an hour earlier, she was at five centimeters. The nurse decided to call in the on-call doctor for a second opinion, and another painful check of Rose's cervix.
The on-call doctor estimated that Rose was only eight centimeters, but still, it was time to bring in our regular doctor. After receiver a phone call, Dr. Meier was at the hospital seven minutes later, fleece-zip-up-clad, and as calm as could be. Rose and I on the other hand, were getting anxious.
I think that by five a.m., it was seriously time for Rose to push. For the previous hour, or so, the contractions had subsided and things seemed pretty calm. When her contractions started again, this time it was intense. It seems that the doctors had given her so much medicine to stop her uterus from contracting, that when it was really time for it to do so, it didn't want to. After several tries, Rose got into a rhythm of pushing and breathing, but it seemed like nothing was happening. Her uterus was too weak. We tried new positions, but the more she tried, the less pushing seemed to work.
A couple hours went by and the whole process became more and more difficult for me to watch. She was in so much pain, and under so much stress. I've never seen someone in that condition before, let alone someone I love. After awhile, I kind of lost it. I didn't want to see her cry or hear her scream any more. But we had to keep trying.
Besides the medicine weakening Rose's contractions, Oscar was stuck behind Rose's pelvic bone. Apparently, Rose wasn't made to have babies with big heads. But, put those two things together and we had two stuck babies.
I think it must've been a little before eight a.m. when Dr. Meier told us that she was going to try suction. I was thinking, yes, let's do it, let's get these kids out here. Rose was scared. For one, this was really, really going to hurt. First, the doctor had to put what looked like a miniature toilet plunger inside Rose, then pull out it and the babies. Second, since labor wasn't progressing at all, it was suction or Cesarean. The doctor would give Rose three tries at pushing with help from suction, and that was it.
Oscar and Petar were fine in there, just stuck, so that made having a C-section seem unnecessary. Let's just keep pushing until it works, right? It added a lot of pressure and drama to the situation. I tried calming her down by reminding her that she had prepared herself for nearly every scenario over the last year and half, and that each path leads to the same result: safe, healthy babies. That only helped a little bit as the pressure and exhaustion were getting to both of us. Rose tried pushing on her own a time or two more while the doctor prepared the suction device.
Of course, it didn't work.
