At 38 weeks and 4 days I had a sweep done at my midwives office, I was a fingertip dilated and pretty thinned out but my cervix was still mid posterior so my midwife couldn't really get a good sweep in, and said we would try again at our 39 week appointment. At this point I hadn't lost any mucous plug whatsoever or had any spotting. I had been having braxton hicks for a while but that night is when they started being a bit more painful, but I definitely wasn't thinking this baby would be coming anytime soon. Wednesday I did a bunch of pre baby meal prep making lasagna and shepard's pies and was having irregular contractions all day long but chalked it up to being in the kitchen all day. Around 11 Wednesday night I realized that my contractions were starting to become more frequent and definitely getting more painful, I went to bed and was woken up every 7-20 minutes with painful contractions until about 3:30 am when they were coming every 4-6 minutes and painful enough I couldn't get back to sleep so I timed them for a while and after 2 hours of them being about 3-5 minutes apart I decided to wake my husband up and told him we should probably go get checked. (still doubtful being a FTM that this was the real deal) Used the washroom right before heading to the hospital and saw some spotting and plug. Got to the hospital around 6:30 Thursday morning and was checked and was at 2 CM dilated and she told me it was early labour and to expect to have her within 24 hours. They sent me home to walk and labour in the comfort of home for a bit, and around 2:30 contractions were about 1-2 minutes apart and really painful so we headed back to the hospital and I was at 4cm so they wanted to keep me. Labour was really tough but I had a great support system with me. I ended up having back labour because of babies position so I got an epidural around 7 CM because I wasn't able to relax and breathe through the contractions and she wasn't able to come down far enough. Once I got the epidural I was able to relax and progress really fast and was ready to push around 10:30 Thursday night. Took about 40 minutes of pushing and she was here! I had a 2nd tear with a lot of bleeding so recovery has been a challenge but gets a little better every day! So happy to have my little girl here 💕

Hailey Grace born at 11:22PM July 26th, 7 lbs 10 oz, at 38 weeks 6 days 😍