I loved reading these while I was pregnant, so I wanted to share mine. My baby is one week old! This experience was somewhat traumatic for me, so I'm hoping writing it out will be a little therapeutic.

Thursday night we went to the hospital to be induced. I was already at 1cm. I was immediately hooked up to the belly monitors and had an IV inserted. This wasn't my ideal way to labor, but it was necessary for an induction. They had me insert Cervadil (using a Tampon!) at 8pm and again at midnight to soften my cervix. It caused me to have pretty bad period cramps. They gave me a sleeping pill and I got a couple of hours of sleep. By 8am on Friday I was close to 2.5 cm, so they started Pitocin.

Almost immediately I started experiencing contractions, pretty painfully right away! My nurses suggested I walked around or bounced on a ball to help with the pain. Walking with the monitors strapped to my belly was almost impossible, as the nurses couldn't read the baby's heartbeat. They had me walk at a turtle pace, which didn't help much with the pain. After a few laps around the labor ward, the pain was pretty intense so I returned to the bed. I was offered a pain medicine, which I can't remember the name of. It went into my IV and immediately I felt DRUNK. It took the pain away and I was able to squeeze a little nap in.

Around 6pm, my doctor came in and checked me. She said I had progressed to about 5cm and asked if I wanted to continue the induction or get some rest overnight and start again in the morning. I had already been through so much pain and LABOR, that I said I wanted to continue. She let me labor for two more hours before I got the epidural around 8pm.

Getting the epidural was a strange experience. The anesthesiologist was a funny guy and made me feel so comfortable. I felt twinges of pain and just odd sensations in my back while he was putting it in. Once it started, I regretted getting it. My bottom half was completely numb and dead feeling. I got nauseous and asked for a bag to throw up in. The nurse was monitoring my babys heartbeat at this point and couldn't find it. That caused me to completely panic. The epidural started to give me the shakes as well. This was the point I really started to freak out. I felt completely out of control with my body. I couldn't move, couldn't stop shaking, couldn't hear my babys heartbeat. The nurse ran out to grab another nurse who was able to find the heart beat. Once that was OK, I felt calmer and some feeling started to return to my body.

My doctor came in around 8:30pm and broke my water. I was at 6cm. There was no turning back now! The epidural made me comfortable enough to get some sleep until about 4am. I woke up in agonizing pain to the sound of beeping. I called my nurse and she realized the epidural bag was EMPTY. My worst nightmare. She had to leave the room to grab more, only to come back and tell me that they didn't order me more so she had to wait for an order to be put in. I was writhing in pain at this point. The nurse came back about 20 minutes later and filled the epidural. I kept pressing the button but the pain kept increasing. It was unlike anything I've ever felt in my life.

By this time, it was around 5am. I called the nurse in and said I felt like the baby was coming out. She said she would check me, but didn't think I was that far along based on how calm I was. She checked me and I was at a 10 and ready to push! My advice for anyone is to listen to your body! The nurses and doctors aren't inside your brain or body and cannot tell you what you're feeling!

I started pushing around 5am and after a few pushes the nurse said she could see his head! This was THE MOST pain I have ever experienced in my life. The only thing that relieved it was pushing. With each contraction, it felt like my body was throwing up my baby. It was just pushing him out.

The nurse left to call my doctor, who came in a few minutes later. It was around 6am on Saturday at this point. My doctor watched me push for close to an hour before I could sense something was wrong. She told me the babys heart rate was dropping with each push and he needed to come out NOW. She gave me two more pushes before she told me she needed to use the vacuum to get him out. He was stuck in my pelvis and pressing against my rectum instead of coming out of my vagina. My doctor placed a suction cup on his head and while I pushed with my next contraction, she pulled his head out. I then felt his body pass through, it literally felt like a bag of bones coming out of me. They quickly placed him on me for a second and whisked him away. This wasn't part of my plan and I wasn't hearing him cry. I started panicking as my husband went over to stay with him and my mom stayed with me.

I kept asking if he was OK and why he wasn't crying. I was so focused on him, I didn't realize what was happening to me. My doctor had called in more nurses, a surgeon and the anesthesiologist. She kept pressing on my uterus which was SO painful. At that point, she told me I was hemorrhaging and she didn't know why. I could hear my blood splashing on to the floor as she tried to pack gauze into me and it just kept soaking out of me. She told me to prepare myself to head into the OR. At that point, I noticed my IV had fallen out. This caused everyone to panic, as I was supposed to be receiving Pitocin to help my uterus contract and stop bleeding. I had an emergency IV put in place and hooked up. By this point, my doctor told me she thinks she knows where the bleeding is coming from. She started to stitch me up and told me I had a few second degree tears as well as a place she had to cut me due to my skin ripping. About 1.5 hours later, I was cleaned up and ready to meet my baby who still hadn't really cried.

They put him on my chest and I cannot describe that feeling. He was beautiful and alert. They explained to me he had a lot of fluid in his lungs so he wasn't crying yet, but he was stable and OK. We immediately tried to breastfeed and he attempted to latch pretty easily. His head was purple, bruised and cone shaped. I felt SO guilty that I wasn't able to push him out the right way. He also was pretty jaundiced, due to the bruising.

Our first night in the hospital was okay. His latch wasn't good anymore and I was worried he wasn't getting anything. I had no colostrum coming out at this point, but the nurses assured me it was normal. By night 2, my baby was screaming in frustration every time he tried to latch. I was trying to manually express ANYTHING at this point (I had tried the pump as well) and my breasts were completely dry. Still, I was told it was normal and my breasts were producing what baby needed.

We left the hospital and had to bring him to the dr the next day to check on his weight and his jaundice. He had lost 6% of his birth weight and his jaundice was more severe. Our second night home was miserable. He was screaming, crying and I couldn't figure out why. I kept nursing, pumping and trying to express milk and I still had nothing. No drops of ANYTHING. I couldn't take it anymore and couldn't watch him struggling. My husband and I decided to offer him formula. He immediately became a different baby. Quiet, calm, relaxed. My goal was to breastfeed and supplement what I needed to. By day 6, I was able to squeeze 1 small drop of milk from my breast. That was it. At this point, I was defeated and so frustrated. I felt such guilt about the way my baby came into the world, I couldn't handle the guilt of not being able to feed him either. He is exclusively on formula right now and my breasts are completely empty. I never became engorged or produced much milk.

I added this part about breastfeeding because I hope I'm not alone. From the moment he was born, breastfeeding was the only option in the hospital. It was all anyone talked about after we left as well. I couldn't understand why my body wasn't producing anything for my baby. After talking to my OB, she said it wasn't unusual to experience a delay in supply after losing so much blood. My babys pediatrician has made me feel so much better about choosing formula for my son. He is up 2oz from his birth weight and his jaundice is completely gone. I had envisioned myself as a breastfeeding mom and was absolutely crushed I couldn't do it. There is so much guilt and shame surrounding breastfeeding. Of course, breast milk is best for your baby. But my advice to any other struggling mamas is to not beat yourself up if you struggle to breastfeed. You will figure out what works best for you and your baby.