At 39 weeks my doctor stripped my membranes - this is my third baby and it had worked within 48 hours for my other two.

39+1 I was officially the most pregnant I had ever been before and spent most of the day contracting 10-15 minutes apart, but nothing worth tracking as the pain wasn’t too bad. I lost a bloody bit of my plug in the morning but honestly didn’t become concerned because I had lost a similar piece when my cervix was checked at 37 weeks.

Sometime in the afternoon the pain of my contractions started to pick up. I noticed pain at a level I had associated with labor before, but this time only in the front of my stomach (I’ve always been blessed with back labor 🙄). Slowly they started getting closer, about 5-7 minutes. At some point I went to the bathroom and noticed I was bleeding a lot - okay I’ve never had a “bloody show” before so I was a little alarmed because it was A LOT. Like day one of my period.

I called L&D and they wanted to have me come in since this was my third and I could be progressing quickly.

We arrived around 9:30 that night and I was hooked up to monitors for about 30 minutes. I was 3 cm and contractions were only coming every 6-7 minutes. They gave me the choice to go home or walk around for two hours. I decided to walk because I know my body and knew the pain level meant the contractions wouldn’t stop. Due to COVID we couldn’t actually “walk around” so I basically paced in the room and within 30 minutes my contractions were 3 minutes apart and I was barely getting time to rest between. I ended up begging my husband to get the nurse because there was no way I was going to last for 2 hours of this.

She came in and said they wanted to monitor me again for 30 minutes, but after three contractions on the monitors I told my husband to get her because I needed to be checked.

I really wanted to give birth without pain medication this time because I had always opted for an epidural, but at this point I was asking for the epidural as quick as possible.

A different nurse came in and checked me, and determined I went from a 3 to a 6 in about 40 minutes. She starts trying to find an open room for me, by this point I’m in tears during contractions and my poor husband is trying to do counter pressure to help. We make our way to the room and I immediately feel like I have to poop. I try to go but it’s horribly painful to sit on the toilet so I end up having a huge contraction in the bathroom while hunched over the sink and my water breaks everywhere. My husband yells to the nurse that my water broke and at this point she’s panicking because I don’t even have an IV in yet. They get me to the bed and put the IV in and I feel like I have to push. They check me and I’m at an 8, which happened within 10 minutes of me getting to the room. The doctor decides she isn’t leaving because she doesn’t think I have time and tries to explain that I probably don’t have time for an epidural either. On the next contraction, I again feel like I need to push and she checks me and I’m complete. The anesthesiologist walks in at almost the same moment and she reminds me that it can take 20 minutes for the epidural to take, so there might be no point. I looked at her and said “okay, I just want her out because I can’t do this much longer.” On the next contraction I got in about three strong pushes and delivered my daughter without any tearing (I’ve torn before so that was a relief).

We got to the hospital at 9:30 and she was born at 11:26. Zero medication, despite me changing my mind. It was the craziest experience of my life.

My previous labors were 32 hours and 6 hours, so I didn’t anticipate this. She is also SO tiny. My boys were 8 lbs. 5 oz. and 7 lbs. 14 oz. and she was only 5 pounds 12 ounces and 20 inches long. They’ve been monitoring a few things because she’s so small, but so far she’s doing well.