Our baby girl was born 2 weeks early on 1/25/17. I had a pretty good pregnancy considering that I have Ehlers Danlos Type 3 and I really thought I was going to end up on bed rest due to how hypermobile I thought my hips and pelvis were going to get.

I assumed through my whole pregnancy that I would have a short labor since my grandmother and mother, who also have my condition, had a labor of less than 6 hours for every child. So, I thought I was prepared....

Here's how the day went.

I woke up feeling hungry, which wasn't abnormal for my third trimester. I had signed up to substitute teach for a friend of mine at the school where I had resigned my position in December. The day was completely normal, other than me being super hungry ALL day. I got home and cleaned up the house a bit and began dinner. My husband and I ate and sat down to catch up on our show, around 7. At about 9, I thought to my self, "I haven't filled out my pre-registration for the hospital yet, let me do that." So, I sit down to do the registration and get to the last screen and think, "I REALLY need to poop..."

Side note: nursery wasn't complete, we didn't have a lot of our remaining items because I had just had my baby shower the previous Saturday. None of the cloth diapers or baby clothes had been washed. I had, however, prepped like 3 weeks of freezer meals a few days before.

So, I go back to our bedroom to use the restroom (this is about 9) and I'm sitting there for a while, normal because I also have irritable bowel syndrome and had eaten a lot that day, when I go to wipe and realize that I had lost my mucus plug, and so I text my mother because I figure my labor will start soon. About 10 minutes later, as I'm trying to clean myself up, I have my first contraction. It was intense. I had to go down on all 4s. I want expecting my very first contraction to be that bad. About 5 minutes later I had another contraction, still on all 4s, not able to get up. So I call my husband back to our bedroom and have him call my mom. I explain to her, through my contractions that I haven't packed our hospital bags yet, when she says, "honey, your contractions are 3 minutes apart, you need to go to the hospital NOW." And I'm sure glad she noticed, because otherwise I would have given birth in the car. So, I get changed to leave, send my husband to hit the submit button on the pre registration, and we get out to the car. And, as I'm getting in, I begin to deliver my bag of waters. At this point, I'm terrified because I really thought I was getting ready to deliver in my drive way. I had reached down and felt the bag and thought she was crowning and took a long minute to decide whether or not to go to the hospital or call emergency services. When I finally realize that I had just delivered my water and not my baby, we committed to go to the hospital, 20 minutes away with my contractions about 2.5 minutes apart. We get to the hospital and my husband runs in to talk to the manat the check in desk, who comes out, sees me having contractions, barely able to get out of the car, and runs back in to get me a wheel chair. We get in and get sent upstairs to get me in a room and checked in. As we are waiting for a nurse, me having intense contractions and not aware that I really am in ACTIVE labor, I tell my husband, " I know I said no drugs, but if I have to do this for several more hours, I want an IV!! So, they get me in a room and in a gown and check my progress... 10 cm and about ready to push. The doctor leaves to put in post labor pitocin order and I have another contraction, I have to push. The doctor hadn't even come back in the room yet. I wasn't hooked up to anything or even checked in all the way. One more contraction and our little girl was born, at 10:51pm. Total labor time from first contraction to birth, 1 hour and 6 minutes.

It was definitely terrifying, everything happening so fast. I had my natural birth. No complications. And we have our precious little girl to boot.

I was told, for the next one, to come in at the first sign of labor, no matter what...