So I’ve been contracting for days. For some stretches of that time I’m contracting as often as every two minutes and they are lasting for a minute or more. When I say days, I mean I started on Friday morning. I’m tired. This labor is going to be longer than Shanna’s and that’s really hard to wrap my head around. I’m barely progressing. I thought/believed/was told that given that the scar tissue broke up during Shanna’s labor that this time would be easier. So much for that. I kind of hate every woman in the world who has had a less than 24 hour labor. It is feeling pretty disgustingly unfair as I start on day three of not being able to focus or do anything for longer than a few minutes before I have another contraction.
The biggest difference this time is I am using supplementation to sleep at night (completely at my midwife’s recommendation) so I am really well rested for my physically exhausting days. For the first two days we asked for help with Shanna and friends came through. Thank God for friends. I felt, most particularly on the first day, like having Shanna around was slowing down contractions and it’s kind of true. At this point, however, I feel like I don’t know what day this is really going to get serious and I can’t send Shanna away every day for a week or more. So even if it is a bit slower today I am still working towards giving birth at about the rate my body can do it. I haven’t bothered to have my cervix checked in over a day because it just depresses me that I am going through this much effort and strain and things are… I can’t even say inching along. Moving millimeter by millimeter instead of centimeter by centimeter.
With how intense things were on Friday I was praying that I *didn’t* make it to Virgo because I couldn’t imagine being in labor all weekend. Well, I’ve been in labor almost all weekend. I just want to be done. I just want my baby out. I’m really getting tired of being in pain like this. I’m feeling progressively more scared of my ability to be stoic. I’m pretty convinced that if I lived in the ‘good old days’ I would die in childbirth. How many days can I handle of this?
In the evenings things slow down to like every 20 minutes. All day long the contractions vary between being every 5 minutes ish to being every 15 minutes ish. This is really really hard.