(Long Post)I’ve always been kinda old fashioned. I like things slow and easy.. but I’m also pretty type A. These qualities led me to know exactly what I wanted out of life at a very early age. I knew I wanted a Home birth, and completely natural. (No criticism for other people who do use pain meds.. it just isn’t what I wanted) I knew no meds would mean a happier baby once she was born, and my body’s natural instincts wouldn’t be clouded by the medicine either. I had 5 bouts of false labor in the last month of pregnancy. By the fifth time I called my midwife and said there had to be something we could do by now.. I was so sick of going through the hours of pain for it to just stop. She came to the house and checked my cervix. I was 1 cm dilated and 80% effaced. I stayed up until midnight taking a herbal supplement to hopefully activate my uterus and keep the contractions coming. Only for, you guessed it, them to stop again. I got up frustrated and on 3 hours of sleep to go to work to find a bloody show. FINALLY something else was happening! I stayed home in case things finally progressed more.. but the false labor pains just kept coming. I went to work the next day enduring them.. and by the next morning when they still hadn’t stopped yet nothing else was happening I went in to the hospital to get a second opinion. They monitored me for an hour and told me this time it actually wasn’t false.. I had been “stuck” in early labor for days at that point... all I could do it wait it out. At 11:30 that night I woke and even though they didn’t feel different I just had a feeling it was time. I timed them for an hour and by that point they were already 3-4 minuets apart. Fast forward and I had put in my 12 hours of horrible back labor that (TMI) felt like my a** hole was being ripped out with a knife with every contraction while my lower back felt like it was being squeezed by the hand of God himself. I was fully dilated and started to push. I pushed for an hour and the baby wasn’t even starting to come through and at that point I couldn’t take it anymore. The frontal contractions were painful but I could do it... but the pain in my back was unbearable. My fiancé rushed me to the ER in town.. hoping they’d give me something to ease the pain while I’d be transferred 45 minuets to the nearest hospital with a L&D.; They instead took me to an er room and set it up as a delivery room. Cut to the end.. after 3 more hours of pushing my baby girl finally entered the world. (Btw I never got any pain meds. I was too far in for anything to work. And the reason I pushed for twice as long as I was supposed to is because there was a lip in my cervix not letting her head through, so the doctor had to go in SEVERAL times and pretty much rip my cervix with his finger to allow her head through which sad to say was even worse than the back labor. It was by far the worst pain I could ever imagine...but her little heart rate never dropped a bit ❤️) So 3.5 days of early labor, 17 hours of active labor, and 4 hours of pushing. Doctor physically making cervix bigger. All unmedicated. By the time it was over my eyes were almost swollen shut. At 20 years old and only 115 pounds pre pregnancy.. I’m so proud of my little body. I am NOT happy with my labor and delivery, but when they handed me my perfect little baby everything just stopped. It was pure magic.. I still don’t understand how the pain can just go away like that, and you’re left with something so perfect. My Vivian Faye turned 3 weeks old on thanksgiving. Such a strong little girl. ❤️❤️ The first week was also rough. I finally took her in at a week old because all she would do is cry and wouldn’t latch or take a bottle very well.. only to be shipped to a hospital two hours away for an overnight stay because the doctor found she has a cleft palate and couldn’t suck as good as other babies.. therefor wasn’t getting enough food. It’s been such an utterly stressful, heart wrenching few weeks.. now the talk of surgery to fix the cleft and anger of why it wasn’t found before we were sent home and sleep deprivation of a new baby plus the financial stress make the days so hard. But come bed time when I have my sweet pea in my arms.. I couldn’t be happier. She couldn’t be more perfect. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. 💕