random labor comment...

Okay, when I was in labor with Ava, I hadn't had any child birth classes, including breathing/labor techniques. We signed up for a class before Ellie was born, but it was rescheduled for after her due date, so it wouldn't have done me any good. With Ava, I was planning to get my epidural early on like I did with Ellie, so no worries...right? Well, I was not in labor for very long with her. It started at 5:30am and she was born at 6:38pm, but the earlier contractions were not "hard" and I was waiting for my water to break - but it wouldn't on it's own and my contractions just kept getting stronger and stronger - and lasting much longer (some as long as 3 minutes). However, when I got to the hospital at 3:00, they decided to break my water at about 3:30, so things progressed quickly after that, since I had been in labor for so long already. I asked for my epidural and they ordered it...but they had me lying in the bed doing nothing, just trying to breathe through my contractions. Nobody told me to get out of the bed and try to walk around, which really gets to me, even to this day. Poor Jeff was trying to remind me to breathe because when the contractions would come, I would hold my breath. I read on another blog (some of our friends from TX are due soon and they had a child birth class) that labor is not an illness and you should NOT have a love affair with the bed while in labor. I SO WISH I HAD HEARD THAT BEFORE I WAS IN LABOR WITH HER. I wouldn't have asked for medicine to help with the pain until my epidural came, which ended up making me puke in the poor doctor's face while I was pushing. I might have not even asked for the epidural. Once I sat up in preparation for the epidural, I was able to breathe through the contractions, but no one told me to get out of the stinking bed?!?!? Shouldn't that nurse have known that??? I finally got the epidural about 45 minutes before she was born. Live and learn, right? I'll know better next time!! :-)