My beautiful angel decided to come 3 weeks and 1 day early.

I woke in the middle of the night on the 13th feeling very light cramping. It had been happening off and on for several weeks, just Braxton Hicks, so I went back to sleep. I woke again at about 4:40 in the morning and it felt like something was trying to trickle out so I thought I’d better get up and check to make sure it wasn’t blood. As soon as I stood up I felt liquid running down my legs (I was only wearing my underwear to bed) so I rushed for the bathroom trying to hold everything in. I left a trail of water behind me the whole way. As soon as I sat in the toilet I gushed a fountain of water, I swear it could have filled up a whole gallon jug. I woke up my boyfriend and told him I think my water just broke! I wasn’t really in pain, just felt like really mild premenstrual cramps. We got our bags in the car and I started leaking water again so my boyfriend went back to grab me a towel to sit on.

We got to the hospital and they took me up to the delivery room and hooked me up to the monitors and tested for amniotic fluid to confirm my water had broken. The monitors would show when I was having contractions, but they where so light I barely felt anything. They where 3 minutes apart and about 1 minute long. The nurse would look at me and ask are you not feeling that? I was like kinda not really? They checked dilation and I was only 1.5 cm, so they said they would monitor me and see how I progressed on my own. Around 10 am I had still not made it past 2 cm and my contractions had started spacing out so they said they would have to start pitocen. I had already told them I planned on going natural but they warned me that pitocen would make the pain much worse.

After about 2 hours the contractions started to hit me all at once really hard. They checked dilation again and that was the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life. I was screaming from the pain in my cervix. The contractions became so bad I was screaming through them. They where not very long but only about a minute apart. I tried sitting on a birthing ball for awhile but during those one minute breaks I would fall asleep and couldn’t hold myself up even with my boyfriend and stepmom trying to help me so I got back into bed. I lost track of time but I think it was around 6 pm they checked again and I was finally 6cm. The excruciating pain from being checked made the contractions worse than ever and I started begging for an epidural. They where able to put it in pretty quickly, I had to hold still for two contractions which was incredibly hard. The doctor wanted to check me right after they put it in and I begged her to wait till the epidural took effect so she said she’d come back. The epidural worked on everything except my uterus. I couldn’t feel my legs or my cervix when they checked me, but my uterus felt like it was in fire so they upped my dose. Still didn’t work. They kept giving me more and it wasn’t working and they told me if they gave me anymore I wouldn’t be able to breath. I laid on my side and gripped the side rail shaking and screaming and trying to breath through it. They checked again and I was at 9.5 and said they think I was suddenly progressing so fast the epidural couldn’t keep up. 10 minutes later they checked again and I was at 10, so the midwife got me in position and had me start pushing. It only took about 3 contractions and she was crowning, so the midwife called the doctor. I was grateful I at least was numb far enough up that I couldn’t feel her coming out, and pushing was helping relieve the contractions. 3 more contractions and at 7:59 Pm little Rose Anne came out flailing her arms and crying and they put her on my chest immediately. I felt so much relief from the contractions and just stared at my little baby girl. she weighed 6Ibs 4.5 oz, and was 19 inches long.

Since she was a little early she did not have any suckling reflexes and we couldn’t get her to latch so we had to bottle feed her throughout the night to get her glucose levels up. We worked on getting her to latch every two hours, it took most of the next day before she finally started catching on. At first she would not wake up to feed and it would take 30 minutes for us to get her awake and latched, and then 30 minutes to keep bugging her to keep her sucking. On day two she caught on and now that’s all she wants to do lol! At that point my body wasn’t producing as much colostrum as she wanted and I would have to supplement with formula,

I’m now on day 3 and me and my boyfriend are really sleep deprived haha! We are still at the hospital because her jaundice levels where high, and I had a 2nd degree tear and still having a hard time moving. I fell asleep last night and woke up this morning and discovered my boyfriend had been formula feeding her throughout the night, I asked why he didn’t wake me to feed her and he said he wanted me to sleep. I said ok but wake me next time she’s hungry because I need to express frequently so my production will hopefully increase and not decrease! He said oh I didn’t realize that! Hopefully we will be discharged today an I hope my milk starts coming in soon! we can’t wait to take her home!

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