I gave birth over a month ago, July 18th. My due date was July 17th. I had gained 50 pounds, my pre-pregnancy weight was 105. It was a lot for me to take on, because here I am thinking I'm gonna have a 9 pound baby. We were so sure that he would come 2-3 weeks early but NOPE! Lol. It started at 5:00AM Monday morning (the 18th) I had some lower back pain so before my boyfriend left for work I had him massage me alittle. My boyfriend then mentioned that lower back pain could be a sign of labor since he's been reading up on it. (I'm a first time mom so I didn't know how labor would start to feel) I was in denial because I was one day late and after waiting for 3 weeks for him to come I began to lose hope lol. ANYWAYS, after 1 hour, my contractions started. And yes, it's true when people say "you'll know when it starts". I had a doctors appointment scheduled at 9:00AM that morning so I figured I'll just go in and see what he says. By 9, my contractions were much stronger. I had stopped twice to sit down while going from my car to his office. We get to the office and he says I'm 2 cm. dilated and to head to the hospital! Yay! We get to L&D and I had gone up to 3 cm. they had me walk around for about an hour to see if I'd dilate more. I went up to 4 cm so they said it was ok for me to stay. Around 11:00 AM we started the epidural and pitocin. Let me tell you, that everyone who says getting epidural doesn't hurt, LIED. Sure, the needle doesn't hurt but the medicine hurts like hell. Then the fun started. The epidural really kicked in and made me feel so sick and nauseous. I felt HORRIBLE. But it did help with the pain. Time went by, and I was honestly so sick, I didn't know what was going on in the room. All I remember was around 5PM they had said I was up 6cm. My baby's heartbeat started dropping around that time so they put an oxygen mask on me for about an hour I think. By 8PM my whole family was there. Like I said, I was so out of it from the epidural everything from 12PM to when I gave birth was a blur. 9PM rolled around and I was 9cm. Dilated. By this time I was feeling EVERY contraction. They kept giving me more doses of epidural but it didn't work. I still felt really out of it though. When they told me it was time to push my mom, sister, boyfriend, and dad stayed in the room. My boyfriend holding my legs, my sister periodically giving me water, and my dad holding my neck. I needed my dad told my neck with a heating pad because I had a really sharp shooting pain in my neck from the epidural(is what the nurse said) so bad I couldn't lift my own neck. Then at 10:44PM my baby boy was born! I was so grateful that my family was there to help me because without them, I would've had to have a c-section. Because of the shooting pain in my neck, I couldn't hold my body myself to push. And non of the nurses wanted to help me. I'm torn between getting epidural or not next time because it made me feel MISERABLE. Plus, towards the end I felt EVERYTHING. I felt so many types of pain I can't even explain it. But my recovery was really good. After 2 weeks I felt brand new! 6 weeks later now, and I've lost 40 pounds without working out nor eating healthy. Idk what happened, it just fell off lol. My birth experience was horrible honestly towards the end but once my baby boy was out all that pain went out the window, everything was worth it and I'd definitely do it again!