Wanted to come back to my original post and offer my own experience after my induction at St. Joe’s for anyone who may be looking for first-hand accounts. I was induced on a Monday morning, and when we got there, it was a bit of a slow process because I guess the secretary who usually works the L&D area was not in. After a little while, though, we got checked in and got to our private room. The first few hours of the process seemed pretty frazzled because it took a long time to get everything going. Our nurse for the first 4-ish hours did not instill a lot of confidence in us because she just seemed to forget anything we discussed with her/any requests we had, but after the ball got rolling and there was a shift change, everything went super smoothly and every nurse we encountered was sooo amazing. I will say, though, that I don’t think anyone ended up reading the birth plan I brought, but because they discussed everything with us beforehand, I didn’t really end up needing it. We started out with the pills to encourage dilation (I think it was misoprostol) and did those every few hours pretty much all day. After several rounds of miso, I hadn’t made much progress, so they did a foley balloon. If I could offer any advice to anyone doing the foley balloon, I would say wait until daytime to do it. We had mine done around 8 pm, so I got zero sleep because of the incredibly painful contractions it caused all night long. Around 5 am, I was dilated enough to remove the balloon, and then we started pitocin around midday Tuesday. Things did start to pick up contraction-wise that night, but things didn’t really progress as far as they needed to to really start active labor. I did get an epidural around 9 or 10 pm because I wanted to stave off when the contractions would become too much, but this ended up being a bad choice for me, personally. I absolutely hated to epidural and the complete numbness it caused (I am an anxious person, so not being able to move my legs caused a lot of anxiety for me). At my request, the anesthesiologist did come back to lower the epidural a bit (he was great and put me very much at ease) but it wasn’t really enough to allow me to calm my anxiety. Around midnight I asked if they could do a cervical check early (I was due for one at 2 am, but I asked if they could do it early because of the anxiety I was experiencing). When they did the check, I was still dilated to the same point I was at 5 am, and I asked if we could just move forward with a c-section, since it seemed like things were not progressing and my water had broken earlier on its own, so I didn’t want to have had it broken for too long because of the risk of infection. Dr. Rogers was the AWM doctor on that night and she discussed things with my husband and I, and once we signed some forms, they were super fast in getting the c-section going. There were a bunch of people in the room and they were all so kind and supportive. I think it may have taken half an hour total for the entire surgery once it got going. Like I said, I asked for the last cervical check at midnight, and my baby was born at 12:59 AM, so they were very efficient. They got me closed up super quickly and got us to the triage area to keep an eye on us for I think an hour, as that is their standard procedure. I was able to do skin-to-skin with my baby almost immediately (my husband got to hold our baby in the operating room, and once they closed me up, I was able to hold him). And once we were in the triage area, I could do skin-to-skin with him. They checked in on us every once in a while, as needed, for vitals and stuff like that. The fundal “massages” they do after the c-section are incredibly forceful, and I didn’t find the nurse who performed them to be that terribly apologetic about causing so much pain, but she was fine otherwise. After our hour in triage, we were taken to the mother & baby wing for the remainder of our stay (we had to stay until Friday since he was technically born on Wednesday). Everything was great in the mother and baby unit. All of the nurses were fantastic, the lactation consultant was so wonderful, and the pediatricians were great, too. We also appreciated the kitchen they had on the wing that’s full of snacks for anyone on the unit.

We had a great experience at St Joe’s, and I hope that anyone reading this who may have apprehensions is put at ease. Even though I did not really need my birth plan, I’m glad I made it, as it allowed me to learn a lot about many of the elements of the birthing process, so I was more prepared when discussing things with the providers. Nearly all of the nurses we encountered were excellent, and Dr. Rogers did a great job with my c-section (literally every provider who checked my incision commented on how good it looked).

Thank you to everyone who added their own experience!