My super long birth story: She came on her due date! I started having contractions at 34 weeks so we thought she would be early but baby girl took her time :) we had four different false starts where contractions were super close together. The fifth time there was no doubting it though because she was sunny side up and the back labor was ridiculously painful. I went in with false labor on my fourth visit, I went from 2cm to 4cm, 50% effaced, -3 station over 8 hours in L&D and then labor stalled and I stopped dilating for the next 24 hours, even with 8 hours of a high level of pitocin, so I opted to go home instead of induce. That was Wednesday night through Friday morning. Continued having contractions that were painless Saturday and Sunday, but decided I wasn't going back until they hurt. Sunday night I started feeling the "period cramp" feeling in my abdomen and my back started hurting pretty bad. I waited it out overnight and by Monday morning the pain had me crying out whenever they happened every five minutes so we headed to the hospital. A couple hours there and the nurse said she couldn't see my contractions on the monitor, and I was still 4cm, so she gave me a bunch of water and the pain got less. She said I was just dehydrated and sent me home at noon. I stayed in bed all day because the pain in my back wouldn't stop but everytime I had the wave of pain I'd drink about a half cup of water to get through it. By 11pm I had drank about 200oz of water and felt like I was gonna puke and the pain was still there and getting worse. Tried to sleep but by 2am Tuesday the pain was terrible and coming fast and I decided I'd go to L&D and if I still wasn't dilated I'd ask them to try to figure out why my labor was stalling. We got there at 3am and I was 5cm, 90% effaced, -2 station so they admitted me. My water broke a half hour after I was admitted while they were putting in the IV. I had originally intended to go natural but the back labor was so excruciating I was actually crying (and I typically have a high pain tolerance) so I asked for the epidural. Another half hour later my nurse checked me and I was a 7 and shaking like a leaf with the contractions coming just a minute apart. I was writhing in pain and begging for the epidural but I was progressing fast and we had to wait for my blood work and the nurse said I probably wouldn't be able to hold still for it anyway so she didn't think I would be able to get it. Since I couldn't get it she said we should "help speed things up" and had me lie on my left side to try to encourage baby to move down since she was still high up. Half an hour like that and she had moved down and I was a 9. I couldn't stop the urge to push even though the dr wasn't there yet and I was literally screaming from the pain and finally the nurse told me to start pushing since it would be harder to get baby out since she was face up. Twenty minutes of pushing and suddenly I felt her in the birth canal and the nurse told me to stop so the dr could come in. HA! How the hell could she even ask that?! 😂 Dr came in and I was already starting to push before she walked through the door. Baby got stuck at 4 points before finally bursting out like she should. She came our perfectly healthy and just absolutely wonderful and I ended up with a 2nd degree tear that needed stitches. I might never have another baby with the memory of this feeling like I was being torn in two but I am super grateful I was only in L&D for two hours before she came ❤️ if I had gotten an epidural there's a good chance labor would have stalled and I'd have had a very different experience so I'm glad, in a way, that it went the way it did 😁