It seems like everything just worked out this week. Last week, I had my weekly checkup and discovered I had a mild case of PUPPPs and my doctor asked if I had any itching in my palms of my hands or the bottoms of my feet and I said “no”, so that was all good. Several days later, I experienced some itching on the bottoms of my feet, not my hands, so I figured I would mention this to her at my next appointment. A few days later, on Tuesday, I had my weekly checkup again and mentioned it, so my doctor ran some labs (liver function and bile acid). I hadn’t taken my birthing class yet and there happened to be one right after my appointment that the nurse let me drop-in on. It was really informative and helpful. So glad I went to it then!

Of the two lab results, one came back normal on that same Tuesday. On Thursday, I was hanging out at a friend’s house and watching Lifetime movies during the day (I started maternity leave last week) and then at 3:00pm I got a call from my doctor that my bile levels were high and I should go get induced at the hospital... like right then. They were concerned about cholestasis of pregnancy, which has an increased rate of stillbirth in babies. So if you’re term and have it, they like to induce right away. So, luckily I had my bag and Aria’s bag in my car with me and was already halfway to the hospital. My husband works like 3 minutes from my friend, so he came to pick me up along with all of our stuff and we were on our way! How lucky were we to be where we were?

We checked in at 4:00pm and started Cytotec at 6:30pm, every 2 hrs. Weirdly, I was having contractions before that and this helped them along. Contractions started getting bad around 2:10am. The nurses checked my progress and I was 1cm dilated and 70% effaced. I asked for a med to help and they gave me Stadol at that moment. It made me feel like I was in a trippy dream. It lasted about 3.5 hours so I got to sleep during that time. I really started feeling it around time for another dose (circa 6:00am), but I didn’t get it because they said they were moving me from high risk to Labor and Delivery due to the closeness of my contractions and said I’d get and epidural when I got there. For some reason, they can’t give the epidural until you’re in Labor and Delivery.

Flash forward a couple HOURS and I am still experiencing terrible contractions with no meds. My husband is amazing and rubbed my lower back for counter-pressure during EVERY contraction until the end! I finally got moved to labor and delivery around 8:30am and got my epidural two hours later, around 10:30am! I was checked then and wouldn’t you know it, I was 10 cm dilated and 100% effaced, ready to push. 😒 So I started pushing at 10:50am and she was born at 11:41am. There was a mirror and I watched, but only because my husband was watching her come out and I wanted to see if he was going to look. Looking back on it, I am grateful that I had the epidural so late because I experienced true labor med free to get ready to push, so that was awesome. It was not awesome in the moment, because I was told “as soon as we can” for 4 hours when I asked about the epidural. The epidural worked for the back pain and contraction pain, but did not relieve the pressure of her coming down and that was very intense. It felt good to push though, better than not pushing. I relaxed and breathed through all the contractions and it was surprisingly mildly tolerable. Our girl is beautiful and I can’t believe she is here!