My daughter is 9 months old now but I don’t think I ever shared my birth story!

So I was due August 3, 2017 with my first baby. I was home alone on July 29th, just laying down to relax when I got my first contraction. They were super intense but really irregular at first, but I decided to call L&D; anyway because of how painful they were. As I was on the phone, the contractions suddenly went from being irregular, to 2 minutes apart and so painful I could barely walk or breathe with them! It was back labor. So of course I was told to come in. I called my mom down the road to pick me up, and called my husband at the fire station to meet us at the hospital.

I got checked and admitted immediately at the hospital around midnight, only at 2cm, but had my bloody show as my husband was helping me get changed into the gown. My mom and sister both were there, as planned. I labored for several hours before accepting Stadol to take the edge off the pain. Let me tell you, that stuff makes you feel drunk or something!

Around 7:30am, after laboring for around 11-12 hours total so far, I was only at 4cm. I finally accepted the epidural. Now, through my pregnancy I had low BP issues, as the hospital staff was warned. Even though they gave me extra fluids, my BP bottomed out with the epidural and I had to be given epi. This continued to happened several times throughout the rest of my labor.

At 11:30am, I was still at 4cm but I was effacing well. The nurse said she was going to go grab the doctor to see about breaking my waters for me. But as she turned around and left the room, my waters decided to break on their own 🤷🏻‍♀️. The problem was they were meconium stained. While baby wasn’t distressed at all, the nurse informed me that we would have NICU on standby and I wouldn’t be able to have my immediate skin to skin and delayed cord clamping because she would have to have her lungs checked out right away. I was so bummed out but understood. They also decided to start me on pitocin to try to speed things up a bit.

At 7pm, they checked again and said at best I was maybe 4.5cm dilated. I was getting discouraged. But around 7:30 I began to feel a lot of pain and pressure, and my epidural had worn off on my left side. Worst. Pain. EVER! But the nurse checked me again and holy cow... in a matter of half an hour I progressed to 9cm!! I started shaking so badly when they said it was almost time to start pushing.

The nurse left the room for a bit but my mom had to run and grab her because I started to exclaim that I felt like I had to push. Pushing was so hard, and I was so exhausted by that point that I started crying that I didn’t think I could do it. I had to labor down for a while and baby was trying to come out sideways so I had to lie on my side and push for a while, also.

Finally at 9:51pm on July 30, 2017, after two hours of pushing and 25 total hours of labor, our daughter came into the world all wrapped up in her cord, weighing 6lbs 15oz and 21in long. My OB was so serious the whole time but as soon as my baby came out, she got the hugest smile on her face! (see photos below 😉) I didn’t get to hold her for 10 minutes but I cried like a baby when I heard her cry for the first time, and cried even harder when she was placed in my arms. I only had a first degree tear, but got a nasty hemorrhoid! Sorry for the tmi... but that’s just the reality 😂

My daughter, Ivy Jewel

The next morning:

My daughter now:

EDIT: more photos in comments. I forgot to add a couple photos of the hubs. I gotta include him too!