Here is my birth story! It's long because the whole experience was long. I'm a first time mom and this was really traumatic for me so I'm hoping sharing this will help other first time mom's!

Monday 2/27: 3:30 am I wake up to go to the bathroom. When I lay back in bed I start getting crampy. They were like light menstrual cramps so I decided to go back to sleep. Then around 5pm I realized I was having them regularly so out of curiosity I started timing them on my contraction timer app. Highly recommend downloading one. They were 10 minutes apart, about 45 seconds to a minute long. I had my 37 week appointment that day so I mentioned it to my doctor. She did a cervix check and I was 85% effaced and 1cm dilated. She told me contractions can come and go and to not get my hopes up. She said if they get down to 5 minutes apart and stay that way for an hour to go to labor and delivery. As the day went by they got more frequent but only slightly increased in pain. I was really uncomfortable and As a first time mom scared that I was in so much pain still 3 weeks out from my due date.

Tuesday 2/28: I was timing my contractions for hours at this point and they finally got down to under 5 minutes and once they were like that for an hour we went in. It's about 2am. So i get checked and I'm 2cm 90% effaced. They said since I was still early they weren't going to walk me, they just wanted to look at babies heart rate. After an hour they confirmed I was having regular contractions but they called it prodominal labor and said I could be like this for weeks. Shit. I was in pain I couldn't deal with this for weeks. They let us leave at about 4 am and sent me home with vistarol to slow my contractions so I could sleep. I slept for four hours and woke up to a painful contraction. I continued to labor like this and still worried about when to go in. The contractions were 15 minutes apart after my nap and they got back to 5 minutes after my husband and I went for a walk. They stayed like this, 5-7 minutes apart for hours. Then at midnight they suddenly got more painful. By 2am I couldn't walk through them anymore. Back to labor and delivery we go.

Wednesday 3/1: we go to labor and delivery around 2:30am. Got checked and I'm a 3. I'm in a lot of pain and discouraged at this point that I'm in so much pain and only at a damn 3. They walk me for an hour, after that hour... NO change. So home we go with more vistarol so I could sleep. Mind you by this point I had 6 hours of sleep in the last 55 hours. I was so exhuasted. We go home and I sleep for another 2 hours. I'm still in so much pain it's ridiculous. Contractions were still 5 minutes apart. Some were even 2 minutes apart but I felt I couldn't go into l&d again! Well after contractions being at 2 minutes apart for 4 hours I told me husband fuck it lets go in. I was terrified of having this baby at home by accident.

Thursday 3/2- at 4 am we go to labor and delivery. They check me and I'm now a 4. But after an hour.... NO CHANGE! I'm pissed at this point. I told the nurse, where do I sign away my rights I just need the pain to stop giving something to speed this up or stop it all together. They gave me demerol and sent me home, this is about 7am. Holy shit it made me feel high as a kite. It did NOTHING for my contractions all it did was make me so out of it and loopy. By the time it wore off I thought I was just going to die like this lol I was in even more pain than before and now it was isolated to my hips and my back. I had so much blood and mucus coming out of me I thought for sure I was birthing this baby at home. I knew that all it took was to get dilated to a 5 and i would be admitted. So I paced my hallway all day. I couldn't talk or walk during contractions but standing was more comfortable than laying down. By 10pm that night the contractions were every 1-2 minutes. I was not coping well at all. We go to labor and delivery where they tell me I'm a 4.5... They said if I dilate to 5 they would admit me. FINALLY after days of labor.... They admit me.

From here it went quick. I got the epidural and Thursday quickly turned to Friday. For you ladies afraid of getting the epidural it was nothing! I was terrified of it but honestly the IV hurt way more. I really didn't even feel the epidural happening, only the sting of the lidocaine shot. I labored in peace thanks to the epidural and at 2pm I'm told I'm a 10 and with the next few contractions I should start practicing pushing. I did feel when the contractions were happening... it was a sharp menstrual cramp feeling but it was nothing compared to the contractions without the epidural. At 2:30 start pushing. At 3 my nurse says "sweetie your likely going to have tearing, I'm going to stretch you with oil during the pushing to help minimize it" this was just a pressure feeling. At 3:30 I push the button on my epidural because I started feeling more pain. When I push it, the machine starts beeping. My husband looked and the pump line had an error code preventing the line from giving me more meds. It was out for 30 minutes before the anesthesiologist came to fix it. Mind you, this whole time I'm still pushing and with each contraction the pain became more and more excruciating. Finally it's fixed and I get one more round of meds. 20 minutes later the pain is intense so I push my button... THE MACHINE BROKE AGAIN. This time when the nurse called the anesthesiologist my biggest nightmare came to life "the anesthesiologist is in the OR and he won't be able to make it for an hour"

It's 5pm now. I've been pushing for 3 hours and I'm in so much pain. My epidural was almost completely worn off. I was begging for a c-section. I really thought my body was being split apart. With each push I felt like I was on fire from my hips down to my toes. I literally quit. I started refusing to push, demanding a c-section. The on call doctor comes in and checks me and says "his head is right there, I know your tired but if you can give me 10 more pushes I can assist with a vacuum and your baby will be here in minutes. If you don't want to try we can wheel you up for a section but it will be 25 minutes before your baby is here" I told him to get the vacuum and get this baby out! He gave me a shot of lidocaine in my vagina because I didn't have the epidural and we all knew that my tearing was about to be intense. The next contractions was strong so I'm just war crying and really baring down into them. The doctor puts in the vacuum and the pressure was unreal. I'm pushing and he's pulling. I'm crying and sweating my husband is yelling push! Push! Suddenly there is an extremely sharp tug and pain... The doctor did an episiotomy.. Then the vacuum heads pops off the babies head and blood and mucus sprays all over myself and the nurses holding my legs. I keep pushing and I felt another sharp split feeling up near my clit. Then finally I feel a super warm gush feeling and I hear my husband say "em look! Open your eyes!" I open my eyes, see my baby, and then pass out.

When I wake up 2 hours later I'm told I had third degree tearing up towards my urethra and that required lots of stitching and the episiotomy was a full one so I'm stitched literally all the way up and back. Then I'm handed my baby boy.. Rhett Matthew Plouff. 7 pounds, 21 inches long, born at 6pm of 3/3 At 38 weeks exactly.

Holy shit yall. 5 days of labor, 4 hours of pushing, a broken epidural, third degree tearing, and an episiotomy. It was exactly the birth I feared having. Yet some how, I would do it over and over to hold this little boy.