I’ll start off by saying this: my entire pregnancy, I was TERRIFIED of giving birth, and was also TERRIFIED of having a c-section. I don’t handle medical things well (surgeries and shots and all that jazz) and was not amped about the fact that this kid had to come out one way or another.

My due date was officially January 13th in my chart, but that was moved at my first ultrasound from January 2nd. So a couple days before Christmas, I kept saying to my husband, “I think this baby’s coming sooner rather than later!”

Call it instinct - I just had a feeling I would not be carrying my kiddo to his official due date!

I woke up Christmas morning at 37w2d and promptly (TMI) puked my guts out. I hadn’t gotten sick AT ALL my whole pregnancy - so I had a feeling something was up. I had read a couple different places that throwing up could be a sign that labor was near. I told my mom that I thought today could be the day! ...until the rest of my family also came down with the same stomach virus that day! 😕

Oh, well! That must not be it after all.

The next day, at 37w3d, I started having what felt like menstrual cramps around 2pm. They weren’t bad, just noticeable. I was curious, so I started timing them. They were super random - 25 minutes apart, 7 minutes apart, 18 minutes apart...I figured they were just Braxton-Hicks contractions and went about my day.

That night, around 10pm, they started to be a little more intense. They were lasting about a minute, and were starting to be every 10-15 minutes.

At midnight, I decided to try taking a warm bath to see if I could just soak them away. Instead, they started to regulate to every 5 minutes and lasting about a minute each. By 3:00am, I woke my husband up to tell him I thought this could be it!

I called my doctor and she said I could go in and get checked to see where I was at - since I hadn’t been checked yet.

Around 4am, we arrived at the hospital. Turned out I was only 1cm dilated and 70% effaced. 😩 They gave me an Ambien to take...they said “either you’ll sleep and rest and continue to labor and wake up with some extra rest and be ready to get this done! Or you’ll sleep and relax enough and the contractions will stop.”

We got home at 5am, still contracting, and at the doctor’s orders, I went straight to bed! I slept(ish) but still felt some pretty strong contractions! And on a rough one at 6am, all of a sudden I woke up because it felt like I pissed my pants!!

By this time, the contractions were ROUGH. They hurt so badly, I made my husband call the doc again. She said it sounded like I was ready to go and to come on in!

We got to the hospital around 6:30am and they checked me again - 3cm and my water definitely broke! They admitted me, and I was in my room around 7:45am.

Until my water broke, I had been undecided about having the epidural. But the second time we made it to the hospital, I was demanding it ASAP!

The epidural was completed by 9am (I didn’t even feel it because my contractions were so bad.) and finally I felt like a human again!

The nurse told me to rest up for the next hour or so, because that’s when the pain relief would be most effective.

I tried to sleep, but after about 15 minutes or so, I was feeling like I needed to poo! And I was shaking pretty badly. I thought these were both just side effects of the epidural and didn’t think anything more about it.

Around 10am, the pelvic and rectal pressure were pretty hard to ignore, so I thought I should say something to my nurse.

I was checked again, and within an hour, I went from 3cm dilated to 9.75cm!! 😱

They told me it was time to go, and they got the midwife!

I pushed for 5 minutes, and at 10:27am on 12/27/18, our little boy was born at 37w4d!! 💕💕💕

Labor was nothing like I planned or expected it to be, and I’m 100% okay with that!!