Where to begin...I had my 37 week appointment on Thursday, January 10th (I was actually 37 weeks 5 days) when I was told that I was almost 2cm dilated and 40% effaced. I wanted so badly to try and get things going, but our best friends' baby shower was that Saturday and we had tickets to go see Disney on ice and I did not want to miss out on either of them! Thankfully we didn't, and that night after the show I had Garrett apply pressure to different pressure points known to help jump start labor. Sunday came and I was having braxton hicks contractions and decided that I needed to walk the baby out. So my mom, sister, my daughter Emma (2)

and I went to downtown Summerlin and walked for a little while, Emma was obsessively holding the hands of every mannequin we passed and coincidentally we walked up and down Sage Park Dr (foreshadowing much?)

The next morning I woke up and felt extreme period-like cramping and was having consistent braxton hicks contractions and I just sat at the breakfast table feeling like it was getting close. I went into super nesting mode and cleaned the entire upstairs and did any remaining laundry we had, made sure everything was packed and had hopes of real labor starting so that Garrett didn't have to go to work that afternoon. Well, that didn't happen and things started slowing down. We took a walk around the neighborhood before he left for work and while I was walking things were more intense but would slow down once I sat down again. 5pm rolled around and I decided that I was too exhausted for him to come that night and that I hoped that he'd wait until the next day after a full night's sleep, but babies have minds of their own. Emma and I cuddled most of the night, watched a movie and ate apples in bed. I finally fell asleep around 11pm and when My husband Garrett got home around 1am I was awoken with pretty intense contractions. I got in the bath and continued to time contractions for a little over an hour and they were consistently 2 minutes apart.

Around 3am I called my mom and told her that I thought it was finally time. I was super emotional too which is usually a sign for me. My mom came up around 5am to stay with Emma who was still sleeping at this point while we finished grabbing everything we needed and making sure we had everything set aside for Emma. Garrett and I walked upstairs to say goodbye to Emma and she ended up waking up and was inconsolable so we decided to bring her with us to the hospital. She ended up being a really good distraction through the early parts of labor and was just hilarious!

We arrived at the hospital around 6am and by this point my contractions were really intense. With Emma my labor started with my water breaking and then contractions gradually increased in intensity, with Sage my contractions were strong from the first one and my water didn't break so based off of my previous experience i was convinced that I had to be at least 5-6 centimeters dilated when we arrived. Nope. I was only at a 3. I felt extremely disheartened and I felt bad because my, mom, dad and sister were all waiting in the waiting room already. I was told that they couldn't admit me unless I progressed at least 1cm more in an hour's time so I was instructed to walk around for an hour and come back. Contractions stayed coming every 2 minutes and it was a nice time to just walk around with Emma, our last moments as a family of 3.

I went back to triage at 7am and they checked me and I was at a 4! Yay, baby was coming! When I think back on it, I wish I would have labored at home longer....I'll know for next time! I got checked into a room and this is where the next 7.5 hours of hard labor continued. Sage was sunny side up and crooked so what I had hoped would be a shorter labor than Emma ended up being longer, and so much more painful. I personally do not want to have epidurals so I had to utilize other methods of pain relief, counter-pressure from My husband and my mom being the most beneficial. I used a heating pad and leaned over my labor ball. When I was on the heating pad I was comfortable enough to sleep a little which I knew was a bad sign that I wasn't progressing quickly enough. My doctor kept calling my nurse trying to get her to convince me to start pitocin or have my waters broken but I knew my body would do what it needed to and pitocin would have made it near impossible to have Sage unmedicated. (My nurse was not pleasant and kept trying to get me to have an epidural which just stressed me out. Thankfully the last two hours of my labor I got two new, amazing nurses!) By 4pm I was at a 7 and my water bag was bulging but wouldn't break, I was so miserable so I decided to let them break my water. Our photographer arrived around 4pm and started capturing my labor at that point.

After they broke my water we thought everything would happen quickly...but they still didn't. I sat between an 8 and 9 for a couple hours and used a peanut ball in between my legs and kept flipping back and forward to get him to move down. I just remember the monitors hurting so much during contractions, and I just felt so trapped inside of my body and could feel every inch he moved down. I kept asking for my doctor to come in and tell me it was time to push (she was down the hall doing a c-section) and she finally arrived a little after 7pm. I remember begging her to let me start pushing and she said she'd check to see where I was. She did and I was at a 10 but still had a little lip of the cervix left. She said she would have me push to see if I could get Sage's head passed it and I said "oh I can do it, I'm a good pusher!" So with my next contraction she had me push and seconds later said "okay stop!" and started getting dressed for the delivery because he was coming and coming fast! I told her that once I started pushing with the next contraction that I wouldn't be able to stop. It felt like I pushed forever though because he was big and hard to get out, but less than 3 minutes of pushing and our boy was here! It was so painful but sooo worth it! Sage Emerson was born at 7:38pm on 1-15-19 weighing 8lbs 11oz after 19 hours of hard back labor! He latched on to nurse right away and has been an amazing eater ever since. We are so in love with our sweet boy! You