I went in to the hospital at 7:00 am on Thursday December 8th to be induced. Baby was still super high up, cervix was still super thick, no dilation or effacement. Dr told me it was gonna be a long haul and the baby would most likely not show up for a couple days. So we were expecting a long journey before my labor even started. The plan was to start me on a cervix ripening pill then introduce pitocin once I was progressing. So they got me all checked in and hooked up to the monitors. hooked up all day long... the nurses kept coming in to check me every few hours or so. Not one single ounce of progression, stuck at a 1. Nothing. I was so uncomfortable in that hospital bed. Couldn't move because I'd mess up the monitors. Got another dose of the cervical pill at around 7 in the evening, and I finally got to eat some soup. After that was hooked right back up to the monitors. 😑😑😑 at this point was super frustrated and discouraged. Was having contractions on my own but nothing major, and definitely not painful yet. Then around 11:00 pm I started feeling nauseas. The nurse suggested I use the bathroom before the next shift came in to give me my last dose of the cervical pill at 11:30 for the night. So I went to use the bathroom, got halfway through going and felt lots better. Then all of a sudden I felt a huge pop inside of me like a balloon, and a small gush of something went in the toilet. Here I'm thinking "is that my water??" I go to wipe, BRIGHT RED BLOOD. Now I'm freaking out! What did I do???? I call for my husband who immediately pulls the help string. Three nurses come running in. I say "idk what I did. I felt a pop and now there's TONS of blood." They assure me it's ok and calmly ask me to stand up so they can see what it was in the toilet. I stand up and blood is pouring all over the floor. The nurses assure me that it's normal and that it's just a build up of old blood from all the cervical checks I had that night. the nurses help me go to walk out of the bathroom then to get me hooked back up to monitors to check the baby. Then right at the edge of the bathroom door, the floodgates opened, and my water broke and poured all over the bathroom floor. I was in shock at this point and just stared at the floor and said "is that.... my water??" The nurses just laughed at me and excitedly say "yes! Yes! That's your water! Great job! We are getting somewhere now!!" So they continue to help me back to the bed. My water unleashes another flood at the end of the bed while they're pulling chucks on it. I have no idea what to do so I just stand there laughing. The nurse comes to my side saying "it's ok honey don't cry it's normal!" My husband laughs and goes "oh she's not crying she's laughing. She just laughs at stuff" then I go to get on the bed. My water floods the bed. Get off so they can re-dress it and all of a sudden I feel horrible pain and grab my stomach. The nurse looks and asks if I'm ok and what am I feeling. I just say "really bad pain" then the nurse smiles and says "yep! Those contractions are gonna hurt bad now! Your baby lost his swimming pool!" So they finally get my water gushed under control and get me hooked back up to the monitors. But this time my contractions were coming faster and harder. I started losing myself in the pain. They had me doing breathing and that helped a little. I think I broke mine and my husband's hands. After an hour my husband asks the nurse when I can have my epidural because things were getting beyond real and I could barely take it anymore. The nurse checked me and I was at a 2. She said I could have the epidural now and called the anesthesiologist. About 45 minutes later she arrived and started Prepping me for the epidural. She asked me to slump over on the side of the bed with a pillow and I had to hold completely still. I thought it'd be way worse and it wasn't bad at all. My Iv hurt worse than the epi! Once the epidural kicked in I felt amazing. I could see all my contractions on the monitors but I couldn't feel them! After that I slept for 4 hours! Then around 1:30 am I started to feel another kind of pain. This time it felt like horrible horrible contractions in my butt/tailbone. They were awful and just as bad as my contractions before. The nurse tried upping my epi. Nothing. They called the anesthesiologist back in. He gave me some more numbing. Nothing. He said I can give you one more dose of this but if it doesn't work there's nothing else I can do and it's probably just the baby's head decending and pressing on my nerve. He gave me the last dose, the pain remained but now I couldn't feel or move my legs at all which was not fun. So the rest of the night I battled through the pain. The nurse checked me at around almost 8 and I was finally at a 9! Then at around 8 am the nurse came in the check on me once more. She asked how my pain in my butt was. By now it had stopped back there but it was on fire in the front. I said to her "it's gone now, but now it burns in the front" she goes "huh... let me check you again." She goes to check and her eyes get wide and she shouts "wooop! It's his head!!" And called everyone in the room. "Call the dr! She said it's his head!" All of a sudden the room was full of people and they were getting the bed and everything ready for action. I was freaking out because I could feel nothing from my waist down, and couldn't move anything either. They told me to push but I felt nothing!! But everyone kept saying they were amazing pushes. At one point I even asked "am I even pushing? Am I doing anything?!" And the nurses all laughed and said "yes you are doing awesome!" I literally felt nothing. 😂😂 then my dr finally arrived. She came in, calmed everyone down. "We are going to relax! And we are going to have this baby!" She said with the biggest smile. The nurse handed the dr the forceps which I was freaked about. But my dr eased them in around his head so gently and afterwards she asked me to push my hardest and two seconds later he was out and on my chest and I was still in shock! The nurses cleaned him up and praised my dr on yet another perfect forceps delivery without a single mark. They told her she was a magician and she smiled and said "you know it!" So not only did I never have to have my final dose of the cervical pill because my water broke on its own, but I never got pitocin, and had a 9 1/2 hour labor all on my own! It went so well I'm still in shock. ❤️❤️❤️