At 12am I woke up to some pain in my lower abdomen and in my lower back that I thought was just constipation, but it kept gradually getting worse and worse...and when I went to the bathroom there was a smear of blood.

I decided to call my doctors office on-call service to get their opinion on what I should do. They asked how far apart my contractions were and I told them I couldn't tell because the pain was a constant pressure. My doctor said to go on and come in through the ER.

My husband had gone home after work the day before because him and our brother in law were driving to our place and pack things up for our move. I ended up calling my husband at one in the morning, telling him he needed to come get me and take me to the hospital.

My husband got to our apartment at about 3am and found me sitting on the toilet naked and was like "babe, if we're going to the hospital you need to get dressed." 😂😂😂

We got to triage around 3:15am and I was put into a room where a resident checked me and said I was 3cm dilated. He said he would recheck me at 530am to see how far along I progressed. It was the longest 2 hours of my life. A monitor was placed on my belly and it showed my contractions were 1-2 minutes apart and each contraction lasted about 60-90 seconds. It was the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life. My nurse got me a medicine ball that I bounced on while my husband used his hands to apply counter-pressure on my lower back. My husband laughed at me because I said "how am I going to last another 40 minutes until the doctor gets here to recheck me?"

Finally, it is 530am, and the doctor comes back in to see how far I've progressed. They try to lay me down during a contraction and I have to make them wait. As soon as it's over I hurry up and lay down and tell him that he better be quick when checking. I had progressed to 4cm, and then the resident says "your water just broke," and my mucus plug was sitting in his hand. He said "we were admitting you regardless but definitely now that your water broke." I wasn't going to leave the hospital no matter what with the pain I had been experiencing.

Now the nurse brings a wheelchair and takes me to labor and delivery. She asks me if I want the epidural and I say yes! I'm the next in line to get one - the anesthesiologist is with another patient doing their epidural. The wait feels like forever, but at 6am he comes into the room. My husband isn't allowed to stay in the room so he leaves and calls our families to let them know we are at the hospital.

The anesthesiologist gets his station all set up. They have me sit on the edge of the bed. They raise the bed and the nurse puts a stool by me so I can rest my feet on it. She gives me a pillow to hug on to, and they tell me to do my best not to move. I'm sitting there crying and wailing into the pillow and not moving a muscle. The anesthesiologist says he is going to use a numbing injection and that it is probably going to burn, and it did. It burned pretty bad, but compared to the contractions I was having I just wanted the relief. For probably around 5-10 minutes I could still feel my contractions but I was feeling them less and less. The procedure took close to 20 minutes and when my husband walked back in I was smiling and feeling so much better. My legs were numb and felt fat and heavy, but I was able to move them enough to roll from side to side, and I could also move my feet around.

At 720am, my nurse checked me and I was 4-5cm dilated and -1 station.

At 10am, I was checked again at 7-8cm.

Periodically I had to be straight cathed due to all the fluids I was receiving.

At 12pm, I'm still 8cm with no change in dilation.

My contractions slowed down and I wasn't progressing so Pitocin was started at 4 and eventually bumped up to 6 to get them going again. Everytime the doctor came in to check me my contractions would slow down and we would wait and wait. Then when she left I'd get them more consistently.

My nurse kept putting me on my back for a while, then on my right and left sides to try to get Roe to move down into position. When she put me on my left side the monitor showed Roe didn't like that and I explained she always favors the left side so that's probably why. If I stayed on one side for too long the epidural would wear off - if I was on my right side I would eventually feel my left leg and have to be repositioned.

The doctor and her resident periodically came in to check my dilation, and to stretch me out. At one point they poured mineral oil to help stretch me out. The doctor kept trying to feel for Roe's ears to see which way she was facing and was unable to figure it out the entire time I was in labor.

At 3pm I called my nurse in because I was feeling pressure like I had to poop. Everyone besides my husband stepped out of the room while she checked me and sure enough she said I was 10cm dilated. She said she was going to tell the doctors it was time to push, and that she'd send family back in for us to tell them. When our families walked in I started crying because I couldn't believe I was about to start pushing and that Roe would be here with us soon.

It was me, my husband and the nurse only in the room. Everyone else went to the waiting room. The monitors on my stomach showed us when I was having contractions and I also could feel them most of the time. When we would see a wave start on the monitor I would push 3 times with each contraction. My husband would hold one leg and my nurse would hold the other. I pushed while on my back and on both sides to try and get Roe to move further down. I was given a light and a mirror so I could watch myself push. I could see the top of Roe's head, but I couldn't get her past my pelvis.

After 2.5 hours of pushing and being checked, the doctor said I could try to keep pushing until 3 hours, but at the 3 hour mark I needed to make a decision of using a vacuum or going for a c-section if I wasn't able to deliver at that time. By 3 hours, the doctor comes back in and after I talked with the nurse I decided I would try the vacuum and if that didn't work we would go for a c-section. My doctor explained that with the vacuum we could only go for 3 contractions and that was it so I had to push with everything I had. Also with the vacuum, it had a pressure gauge that they would watch, and if the pressure was too high it would un-suction from the baby's head to prevent any damage. The nurse called a Code Pink level 1 due to the vacuum - the anesthesiologist, a NICU nurse, and a respiratory therapist all came just in case since the vacuum is a more invasive procedure, especially for the baby.

My contractions slowed down again, but the resident was talking me through everything and told me when to push. On the 3rd contraction I could feel Roe's head pop out and then her body. My husband told me her face came out sideways, and that's why the doctor couldn't find her ears when checking to see how she was positioned because she was sideways. They placed her on my chest and I was already crying on the last contraction and I look up to see my husband crying too. He watched her being born and also cut her umbilical cord. He got pictures of us in our first moments, and he got pictures of the placenta, too, which the nurse thought was weird. I could feel the pressure of the placenta coming out as well.

Roe was pink and cried when she was on my chest, but then the nurse took her for a moment to suction her airway because she was gurgling a little bit. They gave her back to me for our hour of skin to skin time.

The doctor and her resident seemed like they were rushing around, and my doctor ripped off her gloves saying they were too bloody and that she needed new sterile ones. They were talking amongst themselves and not saying anything to me. I asked my husband what was going on and he said I needed to be stitched up. As they were working on me I started to feel them tugging on me while doing the sutures and the stitching so my nurse called the anesthesiologist back in to bolus me with lidocaine that made me completely dead from the waist down. The bolus kicked in around 5-10 minutes before they were done stitching me up so it was pretty painful.

I had to get an episiotomy and I also had a 3rd degree tear. After everything was done we stayed in the labor and delivery room for 2 hours of recovery. Both of our families met and held the baby afterwards.

My labor was a total of 18 hours and I pushed for the last 3.5 hours of it. It was such an exhausting but amazing experience, and I'd do it all over again to get to have this little girl in my life.

Miss Monroe Noelle was born on May 12th at 6:12pm. 6lb12oz and 19 inches long 💖