After exactly 41 weeks, my little girl is HERE!!

I was at my brother-in law’s medical residency graduation party, feeling incredibly pregnant and like my baby would never come, when I noticed my hands and feet looked more swollen than usual, which made me a little concerned but not too worried. BIL happened to have a blood pressure cuff on hand and checked me out...my BP was WAY higher than normal so me and my hubby rushed to meet my midwife at the birthing center we had planned on having our daughter at. My midwife checked everything out and....I looked completely normal, no high BP whatsoever, and my cervix was still only at 1cm. She told me it might easily be a few more days to a week before anything happened, but we could start talking about induction soon. I was so disappointed!

Until...

I woke up at 3.30am to the WORST back aches/cramps I’d felt up to that point. I remember thinking to myself, if this isn’t the start of labor, I’m never getting pregnant again. But, not wanting to get too excited, I decided to try sleep. I had just drifted off about an hour when I woke up to a big ole gush of liquid!!! I ran to the bathroom, screaming at my husband that my water broke! I called the midwife, she said to call back at the 5-1-1 mark. That happened within an hour, but we still didn’t meet her until noon since I had a ways to dilate. We arrived at the birthing center....only to be told after 9 hours of labor, I had only dilated to 2cm and still wasn’t considered in active labor.

By 2pm, my back contractions (as bad as everyone says they are...they’re worse) has gotten way more intense and I was in excruciating pain, unable to talk or move through them, and my unmedicated birth plan was quickly starting to seem unattainable. By 5pm, after 14 hours of terrible laboring, I was getting checked again by my midwife, saying if I hadn’t progressed very far, I would be changing plans to the hospital and getting drugs. I had only dilated to 3cm. I cried. And then we drove to the hospital and I got the sweetest relief of my life the minute they put the epidural in!!

It ended up being the best decision of my life.

There ended up being meconium in her fore waters.

She was sunny side up, with her body twisted sideways

And after 33 hours of labor ending in a c-section, we discovered that not only was my pelvic opening strangely shaped, it was also very narrow, only big enough for a baby under 7lbs.

My daughter was 9lbs and 7oz. 🤦🏼‍♀️

BUT SHES HERE AND BEAUTIFUL AND SHE WAS WORTH EVERY SINGLE MINUTE.

My husband has been a rockstar helping out and has blown away all our nurses with his attentiveness and willingness to learn how to take care of me and our baby. I have never been more in love with two people in my life, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been! (Especially since my vag wasn’t torn apart by a nine and a half pound baby😂)