I guess after reading everyone’s birth story I’d write mine since I’m reminiscing. My son is now currently 1 1/2 and I remember everything like it was yesterday. I’m in the military and am in California and have been here since 2016. My husband is in Virginia with my step son over custody issues and to be there for him.

My husband and I would fly back and forth every couple of months to see each other and spend time with each other so this was no different for me. When I hit 36 weeks I had put in for leave (vacation time) to fly out at 38 weeks pregnant to have our son at home in Virginia with family. It became a big issue for no one wanted me to fly. I did all my research and foot work that I needed to and after everyone originally denied my request for leave, I had to meet with our commanding officer (the only person who can deny your leave and it be said and done). After an extensive talk about options with our CO he approved my leave to fly out at 38 weeks pregnant from southern Cali to Virginia. I transferred military hospitals and had my regular appointments in Virginia. I got checked several times before D-day and nothing I was 1 measly cm with absolutely no signs of labor. My husbands and my son was due on 13 May 17. On 12 May 17 I had a regular doctors appointment and STILL at 1cm. This boy was head down, very low. Just not low enough to activate. I was damn near miserable. So we scheduled my induction for the following weekend, if this boy didn’t come before then, as I was in tears in fear for my vacation time was coming to an end on the following Friday and my induction date was on Saturday. Oh well, I guess 🤷🏼‍♀️. May 13 (Saturday) rolls around, my husband and I both decide to buy castor oil and use it the next day that he has off which was Tuesday. Sunday my husband gets home from work and we lay down to watch a movie after going for a loooooooong walk and end up getting out groove on. We do our thing late into the night and then end up laying down to relax. He fell asleep around 11pm and I fell asleep damn near 1am.

****This is where it gets juicy****

So I fall asleep at around 1am on Monday 15 May and wake back up around 4am with the intense urge to poop. So I roll my large and in charge belly off the bed and shuffle myself all the way to the bathroom to go do my thing. I get done, knowing I’m done, but still have the feeling hanging around that I wasn’t done. So I get up and shuffle myself back into the bedrooms to lay down. I sit on the edge of the bed scrolling through Facebook while I listen to the sweet sound of my husband snoring and find an inspirational message...

I didn’t realize that I was in labor before I had gone to the bathroom and came back to lay down. At some point I realized that it wasn’t going away completely but going away and coming back and repeating. So I start timing them and I was about 1-2 minutes apart lasting for about 1-2 minutes. I time these until my husband wakes up at 6am to get ready for work, he goes to take a shower and comes back and sees me just chilling there and asks me if everything is okay, I literally tell this man “yeah...I mean I don’t know....I think I’m having contractions but I’m not sure. They keep going away and coming back” so he asks me if I want to go to the hospital and i say yeah. We get our stuff and go an hour away to the hospital, we get waved through security and go get parking. At this point I knew I was in labor. I never had Braxton Hicks, nothing to go off of but I knew I was in labor. So we shuffle our way up to labor and delivery we get checked in and go to triage. We sit in triage for an hour. We found out I was 4cm, they gave me a HUGE cup of water that my thirsty ass decides to chug the whole thing. This causes my sons heart rate have de-cells on the monitor because he was moving so much because of the freezing cold ice water they gave me. So we get admitted. As they’re getting ready to transfer me from triage to my room, the midwife comes in and introduces herself. Now up to this point I’ve only seen YouTube videos on women giving birth, read stories and read part of my what to expect book. Never went to Lamaze classes or anything. So when the midwife asked me what my plan was, I literally told her “I’m just going to go with it”. She got mad and asked me if I was going to get an epidural or anything and I told her no. I wanted as little medical intervention as possible. This woman got even more mad, mad enough to tell me in a snippy voice “well, less than 1% of women give birth all naturally.” So I said “okay, cool” and left it at that. After this point things aren’t very exciting, I progress just fine. My husband sleeps until lunch so he can eat and take his insulin, they break my water while he’s gone. The midwife comes back and hangs up a bag of pitocin “just in case”. I never ended up needing it. As the time got closer to 8pm I kept feeling the need to push and kept telling my midwife and nurses, she kept just telling me no you’re not ready every time she checked me. Labor wasn’t that hard for me or painful, but this midwife had me in tears at this point. Come to find out she was just waiting on turnover of shifts. When my new midwife came in she was a goddamn angel. I loved her and her staff. She told me I was ready at 9cm to deliver but my son wasn’t. His head was chip up like he was proud to come out and turned into my right hip. So she wanted me to get out of bed for a couple of contractions and swing my hips to jostle his head into place. I did a sweetheart dance with my husband for about 8 contractions before trying to sit on the birthing ball, then deciding about 1/4 down when I got a contraction that it wasn’t going to work out on the ball. At that point the nurse tried doing counter pressure, bless this woman’s poor heart because before that I had never screamed and even after I had never screamed. I had about 2 more contractions standing up leaning over the bed before I decided to get the midwife in again. That’s when things ramped up. It was baby time. As my husband called the midwife my nurse got my bed into place and helped me back up into bed. The midwife came in and checked me again and told me my sons head was stuck on a lip of extra skin. She had me do my practice pushes with her fingers and little did I realize that she was helping my sons head past the lip he was stuck on. After the 3 practice pushes, I pushed 3 more times and he was out. My husband didn’t talk until our sons head was coming out, then he finally gave words of encouragement which helped me more than anything. I was able to focus on pushing and then when my husband started encouraging I knew I was near the end. I tore up and I tore into my l urethra which didn’t hurt that bad. Out of everything that hurt the most, the massage to get the placenta out and the clots out, that had to of hurt the most. I’ll take labor and delivery any day over that damn massage.

Anyways here’s a couple of more pictures and thank you for sticking through until the end or just showing up for the pictures!☺️

Day before D-day at 40+1

8Ibs 6oz and 21 inches long❤️

The day we got to leave the hospital, giving a thumbs up for leaving 👍🏼

My not so little boy now.

My partner in crime.

Him and his older brother.

Brother, him and daddy❤️