I went to work in L&D on 1/9/2022 and was having contractions that were 10 minutes apart. I knew they were irregular but they still made me stop and kinda breath through them. My charge nurse decided to let me go home around 3am but told me to get checked in triage before I went home. I was still 4cm (had been since 38 weeks). I drove home which was an hour drive and slept until the contractions woke me up out of my sleep which was about 45 minutes to an hour (4:30am ish). From there, my contractions were every 2-5 minutes. I could no longer stay in the bed and rest through them so I just walked around the house so I wouldn’t wake my husband up. After timing them for about 2 hours and them getting more intense I woke my husband at 6:30am and told him we needed to get ready to leave since we live an hour away from the hospital. We dropped our daughter off at her aunts and officially left around 7:30am. I was doing good on the ride, breathing through my contractions but about 30 minutes in I couldn’t breathe through the contractions anymore because they were so intense. Once I found myself holding onto the car door handle and cursing, I knew it was getting real. We arrived at the hospital around 8:15 and got checked in. Of course all my coworkers were excited to see me and in reality I just wanted them to all be quiet and get me an epidural 😂. They took me straight into a room since I was already 4cm. I was checked at 9am and was a stretchy 5-6cm dilated. They immediately got an IV started and drew labs for me to be able to get my epidural. The waiting was the most excruciating. With every contraction the pressure of his head coming down and the feeling of needing to push was so intense. Once the epidural was placed, it took effect in about 5 minutes. My nurse got me all tucked in and gave me some time to rest. My doctor came and broke my water around 11:40am and I was 7-8cm/100/0 but the right side already had no cervix left at all. My nurse peanut balled me on my side and let me rest and told me to call out when I felt pressure. So I rested and let that pressure build for awhile until it was a constant feeling. I told my nurse and she checked me and I was complete and plus 1 at 1:21pm. We started by doing a practice push and she immediately had them call the doctor and a second nurse for delivery because I moved the baby way down very quickly. Another 3 minutes and Israel was born on January 10th at 1:24pm weighing in at 9lbs 3ozs, 20.5 inches long after only over 8 hours of labor. This was the best birthing experience I could’ve asked for!