Let me start by saying that I REALLY wanted a natural labor and delivery. My water broke at 9:30am on 12/16/16 at 40 weeks & 2 days. It was a small gush when I first got up and then I saw that my mucus plug came out when I wiped. I still wasn't sure it was my water though because the same thing happened the morning before, minus the plug, and they told me it wasn't my water when I went to get it tested. I didn't have any more leaking and no painful contractions so I just waited for the non stress test I had scheduled at 1pm and asked them to check it then. To my surprise they told me that it had ruptured. They admitted me around 2:30pm, but I still wasn't having real contractions. I had only gotten 3.5 hours of sleep the night before so I had to choose between trying to sleep before the show started or trying to get my contractions to get more intense. I chose to stay up to try to get things started because it had already been so long since my water broke. They wanted to start me on pitocin or rupture my membranes the rest of the way. I wasn't ready for pitocin quite yet. I still wanted my natural birth. So, at 10pm we decided to rupture my membranes the rest of the way to see if that could get things started. I didn't actually get them ruptured until 11pm. It just felt like a cervix check. It didn't break right away when she was done. The nurse and midwife were sitting there talking to me about it when all of a sudden it felt like I was peeing all over myself. It was so much liquid. It also had meconium in it. The whole labor I was leaking fluid with yellow bits in it. It was really hard not to leak all over the place. We waited four hours to see if that would work. It didn't. So at almost 4am I started on pitocin. Powerful contractions started at 6am. I got my first cervix check since being admitted at around 11am. (They don't like to do a lot of checks after your water is broken because there is a higher risk of infection.) I had only dilated a half a centimeter since my 40 week appointment. I was only 2cm dilated. I was heartbroken. Here I was thinking it was almost over and it hadn't even really started yet. I felt like my pain was all for nothing. At this point I had only slept 3.5 out of the last 50 hours, and I had a lot of labor left. I was exhausted and HAD to get some sleep or I wouldn't be pushing anything out of me, so I opted to get an epidural so they could up the pitocin while I slept a little. Around that same time my midwife realized that baby was positioned posterior (that's probably why I wasn't progressing), and had me labor on my hands and knees until the anesthesiologist got there. Got the epidural in at 12:30pm and also started on penicillin incase I got an infection since it had been over 24 hours since my water broke. By then baby had flipped to facing my right side, so the midwife just told me to sleep on my left side. After they hooked up all my other tubes, I went to sleep and slept until like 5pm when the contractions started to wake me up. Got checked again at 6pm and was 7cm dilated. FINALLY some progress! But I also had a fever which meant that I could possibly have an infection, so they put me on even more antibiotics. They checked again an hour later at 7pm and I was 10cm! I started pushing around 7:30pm with a million people in the room because it was a shift change, I had such a long labor I was close to getting a c section so the surgeon was there, and because baby pooped already there was a chance of asphyxiation so there were nurses and a pediatrician there for her. After almost 4 hours of pushing I finally got her head out and I thought it was over, but the next thing I know I'm being leaned back and a nurse is pushing REALLY hard on my abdomen. Even with the epidural I was crying and begging her to stop. I didn't know what was going on at the time, but I was later told that her shoulder had gotten stuck. The abdominal pushing got her unstuck though, which I'm so thankful for now. Her shoulders are just fine, thank God. She was born at 11:27pm on 12/17/16, weighing 9lbs and 13oz and 20.5in long. I think she was actually longer though because she measured 21.75in just 5 days later at her first apt with her pediatrician. After all of that I only had a tiny vaginal tear. The midwife said that she usually wouldn't even bother stitching a tear that small, but she put one in for me because I was at a high risk of hemorrhaging due to my long labor. She is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. I have never been so proud. 

I was surprised that the main thing that hurt postpartum was my rectum. It felt like all of my organs were going to fall out of my butt every time I stood up. Oh, and I couldn't feel when I had to go pee anymore for a few days. Why did nobody tell me that was going to happen? 

So it's definitely not the birth I imagined, but I am so thankful that I avoided a c section. My midwife and the nurses were beyond amazing. One of my biggest fears about delivering in a hospital was being pushed into interventions that I didn't want. Everyone was so amazing about not being pushy though. I was fully informed of the risks with everything, but also supported if I wanted to wait longer. I think that most hospitals have an automatic c section policy if you hit 24 hours since your water broke and you still haven't delivered. I really couldn't have done it without the amazing medical staff.