For various reasons, my SO wanted me to go into labor on Sunday or later. As soon as he told me that, I like  knew that he had jinxed it. That evening (around 4pm) I invited my friend over to play video games. I don't know if it was a combination of me laughing and my competitive spirit or what, but while I was sitting on the couch, I felt like I was leaking more fluid than just discharge. I stood up

and laughed for a minute and then checked myself in the bathroom. My undies were soaked. I was having contractions but they weren't very painful at this point. I had GBS though so I had to go into the hospital anyway. I took a quick shower and went to the hospital. When I got there they were slightly painful and 2 minutes apart. They checked me and told me that I was 4 cm. I had planned on trying to go natural and it wasn't very painful so I declined the epidural.  Suddenly, my contractions became really intense and on the machine you  could see that they were one right after the other. Like they were starting before the last one ended. It was awful and caved to an epidural because my doctors told me that I was likely to be in labor for a long time being a ftm. I couldn't get an epidural until my iv fluid bag was completely gone (and they had just changed it 😒). So that took another 45 min. Then I had to wait for my doctor to approve and for the anesthesiologist to get there. So it took about 3 hours from the point that my water broke till the anesthesiologist got in my room. They decided to wait until after the epidural to check my progress. So I got that done (fighting horrible contractions the whole time). They checked me like 10 seconds after I was done. Turns out that I was completely effaced and at a ten! Basically the epidural was just for the pushing. Even though I was at a 10, she was high up so we decided to let my body use the contractions to move her down so I wouldn't have to push as long. 30 min later, her head was crowning and the nurses called the doctors. I could feel my contractions still so they unhooked me from the machine and we basically just spread my legs and worked with them to push her out. Took like ten minutes max. Very little tearing and none of it on the perineum. Total time in labor 5 hours. I'm kind of disappointed that I got the epidural and wish they would have checked me again before they did it because knowing that I was a ten would have kept me going. I am glad that I went basically natural though. Oh well. Welcome Alexandria Marie