Now that I have some time I figured I try to sit down and type out my Birth story. this is going to be very long and a little bit more than just a birth story.

At 36 weeks exactly ( January 8th) I had a doctor appointment. At my doctor appointment I was not dilated at all and I had an easy and issue free pregnancy. At my doctor appointment my blood pressure was a little on the high side but not high enough to be considered a high blood pressure pregnancy and I had never had high blood pressure at any previous doctor appointments so the doctor said we were just going to keep an eye on it.

I decided to stop working that same day and take it easy the remainder of my pregnancy because I was starting to feel pretty tired and having a hard time focusing on work anyway.

So flash forward to January 12th when I’m 36 weeks and 4 days

I wake up around 11am and decide I want to go grocery shopping because we need stuff for around the house and I ask my sister in law to join me to help out. I took a shower and got ready and during this I started to

Feel some back pain around 12pm.

It started out like a dull back ache but it was coming and going instead of consistent so I had a feeling it could be contractions but assumed it was just false labor and would stop because I wasn’t dilated at my previous appointment and hadn’t been doing any activity.

I pick up my sister and law and tell her we’re not going to go grocery shopping after all because I was having contractions and didn’t want to encourage them. We go back to my apartment and watch tv all day.

Around 5pm the contractions hadn’t stopped like I thought but instead gotten worse. Still bearable but to the point where I had a hard time focusing on watching tv.

I texted my husband ( who was at work) that I think maybe I’m going into labor and we probably should go to the hospital. He got home at 6pm and I decide to take a bath to see if that helped stop them. I felt pretty good in the bath and even felt like they were going away but as soon as I got out the pain Increased and started hurting in my hips and in the front part of my stomach as well but still very bearable.

It’s about 8pm when I decide to go to the hospital and if it’s not really contractions and just regular pains then they can tell me and I will know for sure at least.

We get into triage about 8:30 pm and they checked me and I was at 5cm dilated. I was in shock. I thought i would be in way more pain which is why I put off coming to the hospital so long and didn’t believe I was in labor.

As soon as they checked me the pain picked up a lot and at that point I was like oh shit this is real.

They left me hooked up to make sure my contractions would continue for about 15 minutes and then by 10pm they had me in a labor and delivery room and had my epidural by 11pm, before they gave me the epidural they checked me again and I was at a 6.

I asked for the epidural right away, I never had intentions of going natural. Getting the epidural was not pleasant but wasn’t too bad. The local anesthetic didn’t hurt anymore than getting my IV did and the epidural is self had me yelping a few times but more because the sensation was so strange more than it was painful. As soon as it was in I had pretty fast relief.

As soon as I was numb I got the shakes super bad and that was the worst I felt like I was vibrating. I never felt any more contractions after I got the epidural. About 30 minutes after the epidural at like 11:30 pm they checked me again and I was at a 7. After that I was just chilling laying down had the shakes really bad and was chit chatting with my family. At 1am they checked me and I was between 8 and 9cm.

At this point when the nurse checked me she tried to get my water to break with her fingers but she said that my sack was one of the toughest she had ever encountered. She had my get in a seated position in the bed to encourage gravity to break my back. After about an hour of that ( 2:30 am) she checked me again and I was between 9-10cm but my sac refused to break still.

I should mention the reason they didn’t manually pop it forreal is because my doctor didn’t want to for some strange reason.

Anyway finally at 3am she got in there again and finally got my bag to pop with me “practice pushing” and her in there with her fingers. As soon as my water broke I went back down to 9cm but then 15 mins later at 3:30am I was at a full 10cm.

The pressure to poop Came as soon as my water broke so as soon as I was at a full 10 we started practice pushing. We practice pushed about 6 times total with the nurse , 3 times per contraction for 2 contractions and the baby was crowning. She asked me to stop pushing because we had to wait for the doctor she didn’t expect me to get so far so fast. Waiting for the doctor was the worse 15 minutes of my life I wanted to push so bad and the pressure was intense.

As soon as my doctor got here I pushed for 2 more contractions ( about 4 times) and she was out! I was in shock literally it didn’t feel real. While she was coming out I felt the sting of when I tore but was still pretty numb

She was born at 4:30 am 1/13/19

6 pounds even and 17 inches tall.

I had one 1st degree tear and when he started to stitch me up my epidural had started to wear off so that stung like a bitch. They didn’t put my baby on me even though they said they would so I was getting worried on why I couldn’t have her.

They gave her to me after fiddling with her a bit about 15 minutes later and I got to breast feed for the first time which went ok but not great which I guess is to be expected.

After about an hour they took her away to clean her and didn’t bring her back for 3 hours.

Finally they brought her back and I tried to breast feed her again but she refused she kept going to sleep. I ended up having to supplement formula which was very disappointing but even with the formula she didn’t want to stay awak to eat. and then like 5 hours later they came and took her away to the NICU because her blood work came back and her white blood cell count was high and her biliburin levels climbing and her blood sugars inconsistent 😭

After they took her I cried for an hour straight until they let me go down ther

She is still in the NICU now but she’s doing ok they are trying to get her to eating better and once she gets to eating more aggressively they will let me take her home, they are estimating not more that 48 more hours because she’s healthy on all sides other than her eating and biliburin levels. They told me these issues are common with babies born at this gestation.

I’m sad to not have my baby with me and struggling to keep my mood up. I’m pumping every 2-3 hours because I want so badly to get to exclusively breast feed but right now that’s not an option. The only time I’m happy is when I get to go down to feed her and I’ve hardly slept maybe 4 hours since I gave birth 72 hours ago. This is really tough for me.

Anyway look at my perfect baby