I honestly thought I was going to die in that moment.

My birth story...

On 1/10/18 I went to bed like normal, I had felt some contractions through the day but nothing to make me think I was going to go into labor. I had just closed my eyes and started to fall asleep at 11:30pm when I felt a small gush of fluid. I honestly thought I might have peed a little bit so I rolled over to get up and then more fluid came rushing and at that moment I knew it wasn’t pee. I was having absolutely no contractions whatsoever when my water ruptured.

I walked around to the other side of the bed and woke up my husband telling him my water had broke, he just looked at me in disbelief because I wasn’t in any pain. “Are you sure?” He asked me. I was definitely sure.

By this time I was starting to pace around because I was getting nervous. I called labor and delivery and got in touch with the dr on call and told her what I had experienced. I was told I could stay home a few hours or I could come in now. I decided to stay home for a little while to get a shower and make sure I had everything I needed together.

Around 1am I called my parents to ask if they could come pick up our other child so my husband and I could head to the hospital. My husband joked that this was not what he expected the car ride to the hospital to be like, the roads were so calm, it was 50 degrees in January (considering we were expecting a blizzard the next day) and I was still having zero pain. We made it to the hospital around 2:30am, I was checked and told I was only 1cm (I wanted to cry) but my water was ruptured, so I was admitted and started on pitocin.

The pitocin definitely made the contractions come on. After 5 hours of pitocin I was checked and was at 3cm. After 7 hours I decided I wanted an epidural. I went into my pregnancy thinking I was going to be able to stick it out and not have an epidural but the pitocin and the amount of time I was taking to progress got the best of me. (My first labor was only 6 hours long).

Getting the epidural was the scariest thing I have ever experienced, and no not because of the needle. My body did not handle the epidural well at all, I honestly thought I was going to die. The placement went great, and so did the test run of the medicine. I was helped into a comfortable position and the epidural drip was turned on and that’s when everything went down hill.

My heart rate went up into the 150s-160s and my blood pressure bottomed out to 60s/30s. I have never seen so many people run into a room so fast. They kept giving me shots in my legs and pumping medicine into my iv line but every time they would start to get my vitals to stabilize I would bottom out again. My husband said my eyes were rolling back from me being on the verge of passing out. I felt like a rag doll, I had no control over my body, I was shaking uncontrollably and getting sick. I was given oxygen and they did ultrasounds of my heart but couldn’t find the cause of anything that was going on. Honestly, if my husband hadn’t gave me details afterwards I don’t think I would have much memory of what was going on. After what seemed like forever they were finally able to get me stable and baby had handled everything well so I was able to progress with labor.

By the time I was around 8cm I could feel the pain from the contractions again and I was not about to ask for any type of pain medicine out of fear of experiencing what I had all over again. Luckily once I was 8cm everything seemed to go faster and it felt like no time before I needed to push.

I pushed three times and out into the world she came. After 16 hours of labor my husband cried and cut her cord, it was beautiful. She weighed eight pounds even, was 20 inches long, and I had no tearing. I was able to do skin to skin right away and she came out looking for food and latched perfectly. We are so blessed.