And that's okay. Here's my birth story.

I woke up Sunday 8/20 at 3:30 in the morning to have my usual, 6th bathroom run of the night. I felt a small pop but nothing else happened. I thought it might have been my water but with no gush I just went back to bed. At 6am I got my first contraction and a small trickle. I knew today was the day. So I ate some breakfast showered and we headed to the hospital. They confirmed my water broke and admitted us.

We planned for an all natural birth. No epidural, no other meds. I was able to work through the contractions for 7 hours. I then realized I couldn't relax through them and let them do their job. I was tensing through each one and was in so much pain. I was only dilated to 5cm, contractions were still 5 minutes apart and the baby was still at +2 station. I wouldn't be able to effectively labor. I decided to get the epidural. Almost immediately things began progressing. Contractions went to 3-4 minutes and were much stronger.

About an hour later they began slowing a little and I was given pitocin. 20 minutes later I had 4 contractions very close together. The first one didn't end before the next one began. The baby's heart rate dropped a little. The nurse came in and was checking on him. She couldn't find his heartbeat. She called in other nurses. We finally got his heartbeat back on the monitor and chalked it up to he didn't like me laying on my right side. I was taken off the pitocin. An hour later it happened again.

I had 5 bug contractions one right on top of the other. His heart rate dropped to below 50. A bunch of nurses rushed in, the gowned my husband and were about to rush me into an emergency c-section. They were able to get his heartbeat back again and we waited. By this time I'm shaking and crying. The head nurse came in and said they were going to wait and see. If his heart rate dropped again, even just a bit we were going to surgery.

The nurses were talking and we were told that it was up to us but they were recommending the surgery. If we had another episode, the outcome could be bad. We agreed to do the surgery.

Came back to the room, my husband was doing skin to skin with the baby. After checking my vitals I was finally able to hold my precious baby boy, almost 45 minutes after having him. He went to breastfeed almost immediately. He had a little trouble latching but seemed to do okay. They came to check on him. I asked for them to look for clef palate, it runs in my family so I knew there was a good chance he had it. It was confirmed he had a whole in his soft palate. This means he will need at least one surgery. It also means he can't breastfeed. He can't get a proper latch. We still wanted to breastfeed, so I would just pump and bottle feed him my milk. We would supplement with formula in the mean time.

We spent 3 days in the hospital after his birth. Because it took us a day to realize he couldn't latch and breastfeed properly, I didn't start pumping till more than 24 hours after birth. Both in the hospital and upon coming home I was finding it very hard to find the time and energy to pump every 3 hours and everything else that came with having a new baby in the house. My supply never came in. I was only able to pump 15-25 mL every 15min pump session 6 days after birth. He was eating 30-60 mL every feeding session. There was no way I could keep up. I was stressing all week about it.

So today, I came to the decision with my husband that we would just formula feed. We tried to breastfeed but the circumstances just weren't allowing it this time.

Sorry for the long post. But if you are still reading, don't be to hard on yourself if your birth doesn't go as planned. Nothing went as we planned, everything is opposite of what we wanted. But the important thing is, mom and baby are healthy. And we have a beautiful baby boy.