Birth story

Okay so baby’s sleeping so I figured I’d share my birth story. I spent so much time while I was pregnant reading everyone else’s, I couldn’t wait to share mine 😊

The week of March 1st was scheduled to be my last week of work. I was due March 16th, so I figured I could get in one or two weeks of rest & use that to prepare. I wasn’t expecting him to come early, I was actually anticipating him being overdue. So Thursday of that week I ended up working a 16 hour shift because my work is super understaffed right now. My boss told me Thursday could be my last day if I picked up the second shift and I was sooo ready to be done working I hopped right on that 😂 I slept in Friday morning, did some nesting, cleaned the kitchen, re-organized some things, while my boyfriend was at work. He got home around 3:30pm and we sat and watched tv and talked about everything that HAD to be done that weekend because I wanted to at least be prepared if he did decide to come early. Well about an hour later i started having contractions. Not anything extreme or super painful so I wasn’t convinced anything was happening. Until they continued. All the way thru the rest of the afternoon and evening. And they became more and more intense. I was silently freaking out in my head, but I still wasn’t sure so I was just sitting them out, waiting for them to taper off. After a few hours I told my boyfriend and he suggested I start timing them. They were 10-13 minutes apart at that point. They slowly started getting closer together, but my doctor told me not to come in to the hospital unless the contractions were 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. At 8pm they got to be 5 minutes apart and once it got to be 2 hours, at 10pm I called the birthing center. The nurse didn’t seem convinced I was in labor and was very condescending. She kind of discouraged me, making me think maybe I wasn’t in labor. She told me I shouldn’t come in until they were 2-4 minutes apart and I couldn’t talk thru the contractions. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and even knowing that, I was in quite a bit of pain still. Anyway, I got off the phone telling my boyfriend I didn’t want to go anymore. I wanted to wait until the morning. Well, he wasn’t hearing any of that 😂 he started taking the bags down to the car and then helped me get dressed so we could go to the hospital. Once we got there around 11:30pm and I got checked the nurse tells me I am 5 cm dilated! I was in shock and so was she, since it was the same nurse I spoke to on the phone who was convinced I didn’t know my own body 🙄 So they move us to a delivery room. We both call our moms to let them know he’s coming and they both rush down to the hospital. An hour later I was dilated to a 7 and decided it was time for the epidural. Best decision I made! I didn’t feel anything and it helped keep my anxiety down. I was completely calm the whole time. After I got the epidural things slowed down quite a bit. I stayed at 7 for a couple hours and around 2:30am, they gave me oxytocin to move things along. It worked and an hour or so later I was at a 9. It took another hour or so for me to get to a 10, which was around 5:00am, but he still wasn’t low enough so they had me change positions to get him to move down. At 6:10am they checked again and he was low enough and I was ready to push. They had me do one practice push, then the doctor came in at 6:20am. I pushed two and a half times and our son arrived at 6:46 am! I couldn’t believe how smoothly everything went, especially being my first time giving birth at full term. I was so nervous about it and things couldn’t have gone any better. Here’s some pics of our baby boy Darnell Jr. named after his daddy 💛

6 lbs 10 oz

3.2.2019

First out, they sat him right on my chest 💛

First family photo 👪

Headed home 🏡

Today at 6 days old 💙