8-18-18 was the day my life changed forever.

Sorry this is long! Labor was CRAZY!

On 8/17 I was feeling a bit off. Joked around with my husband that I felt like she was going to be early. I had just gotten a breast pump and was playing around with it to see how it worked. Only used it for a couple of minutes on each breast to see what it felt like.

Went to bed and woke up as normal. Went to the bathroom to pee, pet my dog, bent over to grab my pajama pants off the ground and felt a huge gush. It caught me by surprise and made me question if i had just peed on myself or if my water broke.

I went downstairs and told my husband what just happened. Then when I went to feed the dog another gush confirmed that my water broke at 37 weeks 4 days.

We packed a hospital bag and headed out.

On the way to the hospital we got pulled over because he didn’t use a blinker 🤦🏼‍♀️

But the cop let us go! I still was not contracting so it was just laughs on the way to the hospital.

We got there and got checked in, and they admitted me.

I was only 2 cm Dilated so they started me on a medication to “ripen my cervix” (I can’t remember what it was called.

After I started dilating they started me on pitocin. It took a couple hours for me to start having painful contractions. I still wasn’t at a point where they would give me an epidural so they had me sit in the tub to try to ease some of the pain. While in the tub they started getting closer together and sooooo painful.

We noticed then that every time I would have a contraction my baby’s heart rate would drop into the 40s. So they gave me the epidural and tried to speed things up.

About 6 hours later everyone was able to take a nap because I still wasn’t dilating. And the epidural was starting to work so the contractions were bearable again.

(Friend, Husband, Sister)

I woke up because I started feeling terrible pain on the left side. It turns out my baby turned on her side and now the epidural was only working on the right side of my body. Her HR was still dropping with contractions and she was wedged in the birth canal.

Finally after 10 hours of this craziness they turned her and told me to start pushing. Once they could see her head she got stuck again and her hr was remaining low. I started to freak out about her being ok.

They tried using the forceps and they didn’t work so they went with the suction.

I pushed through 5 contractions while they were pulling with the suction only to suddenly have my dr yell to stop because the cord was around her neck twice.

They cut the cord and told me to push again. Out came my very blue daughter, and they placed her on my chest not crying or making any sounds.

After some rubbing she finally let out a cry. And then my uncontrollable tears started.

My husband kept telling me how beautiful she was. I couldn’t even see because of my tears.

As I was trying to push out the placenta it hemorrhaged, so I started to lose a lot of blood. My dr had to put her hand up into my uterus to remove all the pieces and stop the bleeding.

It was so scary and they almost had to send me out to get a blood transfusion. Luckily enough she got everything under control. And we were about to start relaxing and enjoying that our daughter was just born and is breathing.

Madelyn Faith came into this world making a statement of how damn strong she is.

8-18-18. 5lb 10oz 18.5 inches.

And here she is a week later!!!