Baby Maya arrived at 39 weeks 💕

This is a long one guys, just warning you now!

My daughter was born on August 9th and now that we're in the groove of things, I have time to write about my experience. I'm a ftm and had no idea what to expect. I read every single birth story on here. Both my husband and I were three weeks early, we're also first born, so we expected baby Maya to be early. Well weeks went by and I was in a lot of pain but showed no real signs of anything happening. I tried everything. And I seriously mean everything to get her to budge but she was comfy. The night before my 39 week appointment, my husband and I talked about asking my doctor for an induction date because I was in so much pain and was so uncomfortable. I'm only 4'11" so I thought I was going to explode. That morning we go in, go to our ultrasound appointment and the tech tells me "so you're going to be hanging a baby today!". My fluid was at at 4.9 when it should be 5-10. Everything went so fast and within the hour I was at my hospital to be induced. My doctor broke my water at 12pm and pitocin was started at 12:12. I was already at 5 cm when induction was started so I was excited that I didn't have much more to go. I wanted to do all natural and was very terrified of an epidural. I handled my contractions really well (breathing and having a focal point is awesome). My nurse was bumping up pitocin every 20 minutes. At around 7pm, my nurse had gotten pitocin to a 12 and I was hurting so bad. I had an iv for antibiotics for GBS and asked for iv pain mess. I felt really good for about 10 minutes, even felt like I could take a nap, and then the pain came back even stronger than before. After three more contractions, I asked for an epidural. My contractions were about 1 and a half minutes apart and I was 7 cm dilated when I got the epidural. I would definitely get the epidural again, that thing was magic. After resting, my nurse came and checked me at 9pm. I was 10 cm and almost crowning! She had me do a practice push and very quickly told me to stop because she had to call the doctor. I was shaking extremely hard and was focusing on that more than anything at that point. At 9:35pm I start pushing and at 9:47 my precious girl was here. I ended up needing an episiotomy. Recovery from that was not hard at all and I'm not terrified for the next baby like I was this one. Baby Maya was 7 lbs and 9 oz and 19 and 1/2 inches long. My word of advice to ftm worried about labor is don't be afraid to get pain relief. Don't suffer through it just to prove something to yourself. If I hadn't gotten the epidural I feel like I wouldn't have been able to handle the pain of the end stages of labor. She's definitely the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh