A Frustrating and Disappointing End to the Day

The day started out full of joy and hope. Today, I shall finally hold my daughter in my arms. Finally, we can tell people the name we chose carefully for her so many months ago.


For yesterday we went in for her scheduled induction. Twice, she was given the prostaglandin gel. All was going like clockwork... except that the prostaglandin did not induce labor as we had hoped. We had wanted to avoid the IV drip being the one to induce labor, but it looks like that's not going to happen. My mother-in-law and I went home last night leaving her daughter (my wife) at the hospital. We were assured that early tomorrow morning, the IV drip will be administered and by midnight our daughter would be sleeping on the bassinet beside her mother.

Then, like that Rachel of Friends episode, other women started turning up, all already in labor with contractions. My wife had yet to show any contractions. Some of these women were induced just as my wife was, but readily started contracting; the others were being rushed in by friends or family, with their waters already broken and contracting all over the place.

Meanwhile, fetal monitoring assured us that the baby was happy and everything was normal but for the lack of contractions. The priority was clear: the birthing suites were for these other mothers. Every two hours, were were continually assured that we will be moved soon into a recently cleaned and prepped birthing suite, and 30 minutes later told that our birthing suite given to another woman. All day today we heard the cries of childbirth and hoped and hoped for them to give us a birthing suite—when we got one, the birth can be induced for real.

Instead, there was an IV drip hole with an IV drip attachment on my wife's wrist from 07:45 to now (almost twelve hours later) used for nothing but making my wife clumsy at using her hands. They had tried unsuccessfully to find a vein on her weaker hand and had found it necessary to use her dominant hand. With her left hand sore from puncture marks and her right hand with the attachment, things were obviously more difficult.

I find it necessary to defend the midwives at this point. They had been nothing but kind and accommodating and attentive to my wife's every need. But when 4 o'clock came and they said that they will start the real induction tomorrow instead, my wife wept. The doctors said that the day was almost gone, and they didn't want an midnight delivery. And with my wife "high risk", they'd want it to happen in the day when most medical professionals were around.

Don't get me wrong... I'd rather have all the medical professionals around when my wife gives birth. But what if tomorrow happens as today did, with hundreds of women coming in to push my high risk but low priority wife further and further down the queue?

Altogether a frustrating and disappointing end to the day.

Sometimes, I wish we had not agreed to this induction. My wife was controlling her gestational diabetes so well, but they assured us this was routine procedure. Thanks to today's shenanigans, I wish we just waited.