After sleepless nights spent reading birth stories anticipating the arrival of my baby I’m thrilled to finally share my story!!

On January 2nd at my 39 week appointment I was dilated to a 0 and 20% effaced and since I am on the younger side and I’m definitely smaller my doctor decided the best plan. I went in on January 4th at 8pm to start Cytotec, but when I got there I ended up being 1 cm dilated and 70% effaced with contractions every 5 minutes so they decided to start Cervadil instead of Cytotec. The contractions started getting closer together and increasing in pain so around 3am I was in so much pain that I requested the epidural. I had pretty bad back labor and let me tell you, it’s the worst, but not as bad as I thought it would be!! I had the shakes so bad that my whole body would literally vibrate during contractions. While I was getting the epidural the only thing that hurt was the numbing shot, which wasn’t even that bad. I was super freaked out though because the anesthesiologist seemed a tad bit inexperienced... at one point he said ‘oops that’s definitely a bone I’ve gotta turn around’ like what?????!?!!!! After I got the epidural they checked my cervix and I couldn’t even feel it, thank god. I was only dilated a two though and I felt like quite a wuss. My contractions were 4-6 minutes apart with only 1 minute breaks though so I don’t really blame myself for requesting it so early. Later on they put in the catheter which I was absolutely terrified about. I didn’t feel anything! Around 6:30am I got checked and I was a 7 and completely effaced!!! They decided I didn’t even need Pitocin because my contractions were so close together. They broke my water and I slept for a while, then they came and told me they were starting a super low dose of Pitocin because my contractions weren’t as strong as they’d like them to be. About an hour or two later they woke me up and the baby was getting stressed out because the contractions were back to back so they stopped the Pitocin. She settled down about 5-10 minuted later. The nurse came in to check me and I was a 9 1/2!! I felt like I needed to poop like 5 minutes later so I called the nurse in and told her I thought I was ready to push.. and I was! I pushed about 3 times and she was crowning and then I pushed 4-6 more times and she was here!! They immediately took her away to get checked out because she wasn’t crying and she was pretty blue. She ended up crying and turning pink shortly after. They were delivering the placenta and I guess they were just gonna pull it out, so I asked if it would be easier if I just pushed it out and they said yes, so I push and I just feel a huge blob come out, apparently I passed a lot of blood clots and I was bleeding a lot so I was immediately surrounded by nurses. I got a shot to stop the bleeding and a pill inserted into my anus. I had a second degree tear so while they were sewing me up I finally got to hold my baby!! They were so busy they didn’t even put a diaper on her so she immediately pooed all over me. She was beautiful!! When she was born she was 18 1/2 inches and exactly 6 pounds. She’s dropped to 5 pounds 9 oz, but it’s normal for babies to lose weight after birth. I’m so in love!! Meet Everly Joy!!

One of my nurses was so so sweet and was talking to me since I’m a pretty young mom, she told me that I’m more mature than most 35 year olds which made me feel pretty good about myself. I’ve been crying tears of joy ever since she was born. I love her soooooo much:,)

Here’s a pic of my tummy at about 6 hours postpartum!! Hoping to bounce back pretty fast.