The birth of Gabriel

Here is the story of Gabriel's birth, complete with pictures, although the pictures may not be in any sort of order.
As I mentioned in a post last week, the doctor had decided to let my body go ahead and go into labor naturally, but it had not done so by last Monday when we were at the doctor's office. Because of the "maturity" of my placenta, the doctor decided to induce on Monday evening. So we checked into the hospital at 6pm on Monday the 4th, and began the cytotec induction at around 6:40. Labor began for real a little while later, but was still a result of the cytotec, so they were keeping an eye on my progress, and thought they might do pitocin (to further augment the labor) if my body didn't do it on its own. But by midnight, they decided that my body had taken over and I was able to progress without anything else (for which I was very grateful). Around that time my contractions were three to four minutes apart, and becoming so that I could no longer talk through the peak of them. My mom was getting some sleep at that point, and I was trying to, so there wasn't much talking going on anyway. The nurse would periodically come in and check, and even though sometimes the contractions would spread out a little bit (to more than four minutes apart), she still decided I was good without pitocin. She checked my progress a few times, and I had progressed to 3 and a half centimeters or so by 4am-ish. (The checking was the most painful thing I had endured up to that point - it was way worse than the contractions I was having then.)
It was around then that my contractions became more unbearably painful. Up until that point I had been doing shallow breaths through them, and that seemed to really help. Time went by fairly quickly. Sometime close to 5am, however, they got so bad that I had to take really deep breaths just to distract myself, and squeeze something really really hard with my hands to get through it. I am not much of a noise-maker, so the nurse said I looked calm, even though my pain level was getting up to an 8 or 9. The worst part was that my contractions started slowing down, with more time in between, but they were lasting for longer, sometimes feeling like there were multiple peaks. This was not what they want to see in labor, it doesn't count as any kind of progress. I endured about an hour and a half of this before the doctor came in. She checked me and said that not only had I not progressed in dilation in more than a couple of hours, but also that the baby had moved out of position. This meant that labor would only slow down further, without him pressing on my cervix to get it to dilate. She broke my water, and said that we would try a few different positions to try to help him get back into position again.
Throughout this whole entire process, Gabriel's heart rate was not consistent. They had seen this in a couple of my non-stress tests (the monitoring they were doing at the hospital in the weeks before the birth) - his heart rate seemed more stable in certain positions; it wasn't bad in others, but was not as good. But at those visits it was not enough to worry them. The night that I was in labor, it was bad enough that the only position that his heart rate did not drop in was on my right side. Anywhere else I turned, or when I got up dropped it, sometimes by half. So that was concerning, but because labor was progressing all night, they weren't too concerned. I was just more uncomfortable.
Around 7am or so, they started helping me change positions in order to get Gabriel to move back into position. Because of the heart rate issue, however, they had to keep me on oxygen, otherwise it would drop. Unfortunately, none of the positions helped, and my contractions were at their absolute worst. I was so exhausted that I was falling asleep in the minutes between them, but then they would come and I would be practically incapacitated. They were so bad that I began throwing up after every few. The worst part about this was that I still wasn't progressing, and Gabriel still wasn't back in position, so I felt like I had to look forward to several more hours of this when I could barely handle it then. The doctor had mentioned that an epidural may be a good idea, not for my pain management, but in order to help the baby move back into place. As much as I did not want to do an epidural, I had to think about the option. When my water broke, there was myconium in it, which meant that we would already have a neonatal doctor and a few more nurses in the room for the actual birth - they would have to do more with Gabriel to make sure he was okay right after birth because he was obviously already in distress. So the side effects that worried me about the epidural were basically already happening. The idea that I might have to endure more hours of that level of pain and exhaustion were more than I could really bear, so I went ahead and got the epidural. That was sometime between 9 or 10 in the morning, so I had been in labor for about twelve hours, five of which had been at the limit of my pain threshold.
Sometime around 7 or 8, so before I got the epidural, Gabriel's heart rate began to drop with each contraction. This is expected right before birth, because the baby is heading down through the birth canal. It is not a good sign when you are barely four centimeters dilated. This was yet another sign that Gabriel was in distress. After getting the epidural, my contractions got a little more regular again, but they were still unable to get Gabriel to move into position at all, and I did not progress past four centimeters in the few hours that I was laboring in different positions (even with the epidural, I was able to change positions with help - I just couldn't get out of bed). So around 1pm, the doctor came in and said that with as many hours as Gabriel had been in distress, we needed to do something different. She said he was still doing okay, but they could not do anything else to progress my labor. They could not give me anything that would make the contractions harder or more regular, such as pitocin, because his heart rate was not stable enough. Leaving my body to continue the way it was was only wearing us both out, and not getting the baby delivered. So she decided to do a cesarean section. I was so exhausted and frustrated that I was not really bothered by the idea. I was worried about what had gone wrong that caused Gabriel to move, when he'd been in that position for a week or more. It happened when my body was no longer on the cytotec, so it was not that, but it really is unclear what actually caused it. The whole heart rate thing was worrying as well. So although I absolutely did not want a C-section before, now it seemed like our best option for delivering a healthy baby.
Because I was already on the epidural, they just changed the medication to make it so that I could have the surgery. They gave Robert some scrubs, and told my mom she would have to wait in the waiting room. They wheeled me to the operating room and were ready within a half an hour. Robert joined us, and they got started. In less than ten minutes I heard Gabriel crying. I started to cry, even though I couldn't even see him yet (I'm tearing up now just thinking about it). They cut his cord and sucked out the amniotic fluid and myconium that had gotten in his nose, mouth, and lungs. Then they took him over to the scale and began the process of weighing and recording everything. Robert had brought the camera, so he took some pictures, and I think one of the nurses took a couple as well. They were already sewing me back together by then.
Gabriel was completely healthy, just screaming bloody murder. The doctor said that the umbilical cord had been in his face, but did not really look kinked or anything, so she did not think it was the cause of distress. They sent my placenta to a pathology lab to see if they could find out if it was the cause. But otherwise, we have no answers as to why things happened the way they did.
My recovery has been really good. I really do have a pretty high pain threshold, so even though I had major abdominal surgery, I don't really feel bad. It still doesn't feel quite real. I was afraid that I'd be disappointed or upset if I had the sort of birth experience that I ended up having, but I am honestly okay with it. It may be that if I hadn't been induced at all, the chain of events that happened would not have happened that way, and I would not have needed the Cesarean. But when the doctor got the pathology report back on my placenta, she said that it showed signs that would have led to an infection in the amniotic fluid in a day or so. That is very bad, and is something that might not have been caught had the doctor sent me home to go into labor on my own. Who knows? That was not the cause of the baby's distress either, but just one more thing that we learned about what was going on. I do not feel guilty for my choices during the birth, or for not having a natural birth as I had wanted. We did the best we could at the time, and Gabriel and I are both healthy and doing well. That's really the most that we can hope for after any birth.