Baby Teddy arrived 14 weeks early

All weekend I was experiencing what I thought were Braxton Hicks- they weren't painful except for a few times when they were mildly painful. Monday morning they upped their power to painful cramping and I left work an hour into my shift. My SIL and MIL took me to labor and delivery because my husband was out of town doing military training since we aren't due for three and a half more months! At L/D my OB met me and checked me, I was having real contractions 3-7 minutes apart. 2cm dilated, 50% effaced and she could feel the babys head when she did a cervix check. They transferred me to a hospital more equipped to handle preterm labor and preemies, and put me on magnesium to hopefully stop labor. Husband flies home, we pick a name just in case, but by Tuesday I am stable enough to come off the magnesium and scheduled to go home early Wednesday as long as things stay calm. Probably gonna be on bed rest for a few weeks but oh well. Tuesday night they check me on the fetal monitor, I'm still having contractions but far more mild and far enough apart that the nurse says so far I'm good to go home the next morning. That's at 830 pm. 915 pm my husband gets her again because suddenly they are less than five minutes apart and short but extremely painful. She hooks me back up to the fetal monitor for 20 minutes, sees that they are coming close together and calls the doctor to come check me. Another nurse comes in to help me pee, where we discover I am bleeding. The doctor comes and checks me, finds I am 7 cm dilated, baby is head down and she can feel my water bag. Baby is coming tonight! There was no time for pain meds, my husband called our families right when the doctor said that, and from when he called them to when the baby was out was less than an hour. I literally begged them to give me pain meds or cut him out because at this point I hadn't slept for 48 hours due to all the pain I had been in and I was terrified that something would happen to me and the baby. But they refused to do a C Section (I thanked them after, the prep time alone would have taken longer than his birth took and I would still be in the hospital, plus I am happy to still say I've never had major surgery) and at 12:10 am 8/23, 1 lb 15 oz, 13.25 inches long Theodore Alexander was born. They placed him on my chest long enough to cut his umbilical cord and then immediately took him to a sterile room to intubate him because of how premature he was. He is currently in the NICU where he will stay until at least a couple weeks before his due date if not the full 14 weeks. But he is doing extremely well and is a fiesty little baby who tries to either help or hinder the nurses every time they check him 😂. I was released on Thursday, thanks to his size there was no complications and even no real tearing for me. Most terrifying and worthwhile thing I've ever gone through, though my husband and I are still dealing with the emotional issues attached to him coming so early and being stuck in NICU.