My due date was July 26th... so still being pregnant at 40 weeks and 6 days on July 31st, I was very anxious to finally meet our baby (we didn’t find out the gender ahead of time).

I woke up around 5:30a that morning with “menstrual cramping”. The cramps were consistent about ever half hour so I called my husband at work and had him take me to my already scheduled 8:20a doctor's appt (had at least two contractions get recorded on the monitor while I was there and was 2.5cm dilated). The doctor said that I may or may not go into labor for the next few days (uggggh).

My husband decided to stay home with me and we waited. We watched Army of Darkness, went for a walk at a nearby nature park, and then got Lebanese food for dinner (very poor decision in hind sight, haha).

I finally started having more intense contractions around 5:30p. I started trying yoga poses with a stack of pillows around 7:30p (yay natural birthing class!). I had a really bad contraction around 9p and threw up. We decided to go to hospital even though my contractions were still about 7 min apart. It’s a good thing that we did because by the time we got to the hospital around 10p my contractions were about 5 min apart and getting more intense. I had a contraction in the parking structure and had to hold a guard rail, had another at triage check in, and another one in the triage bed.

Once we checked in at triage, I was about 7cm dilated. We also found out there that I couldn’t give birth at the Natural Birth Center as originally planned due to the baby having an irregular heartbeat on the monitor (common problem that usually corrects itself once the baby is born). I fought through all of my contractions (drug-free) with the help of my husband and I was moved to my own delivery room and started pushing around 3:26a. I ended up breaking my own water and Geisering it at the resident assisting with the delivery 😂.

My husband held my right leg the whole time I was pushing. As our baby’s head poked out the doctor commented on what a dark head of hair she had (“the baby has hair?!!? And it’s dark??”). I got to feel her head and it felt like a hairy jellyfish 😆.

The pushing seemed endless and I could feel everything. The staff and my husband were so encouraging and I just kept at it. Then finally at 5:01a on August 1st our beautiful daughter was born!! Trinity Irene weighing in at 7lbs 7oz ❤️

She is now happy and healthy at 3 months old and the greatest blessing I’ve ever received ❤️