So at 39+6 we went in to be induced, baby was showing little to no signs of coming and my BP was high so my OB said better safe than sorry. We showed up Thursday the 12th at 5pm to start our induction, after 8 IV sticks, they finally get one to stay, and my OB calls and says to start oxytocin at midnight instead of 6 am because she’s hoping to deliver me before the storms on Friday, they were talking tornados and me being terrified of storms, I was okay with not wanting to be pushing during a tornado warning. So midnight comes around, they turn on the pump and get the ball rolling, every hour they come in and turn it up just a little bit, not feeling the contractions at all by 8 am even though they were showing every 2 minutes, I was comfortable and chatting in bed, so my OB comes up from the clinic and decides to break my water to speed the process up, I was just barely a 2 and 80% effaced according to the nurse. So I finally decide I want up on the ball, where I sit and chat for another two hours before the nurse comes in and calmly asks me to get back in bed for awhile, which I do, as she watches the monitor, she tells me baby’s heartrate is dropping at the end of contractions and seems to be getting worse so she wants to see it being in bed will help, so she starts a fluid bolus. At this point I’m panicking and I start to feel contractions and they are 100% in my back, I thought my back was going to spilt in half, there wasn’t a break in the pain and I eventually caved and asked for the epidural hoping that if I relaxed I would progress more and maybe she would handle the contractions better. Nurse checks me and im at a 3 now and she’s having to reach around baby’s head to get to my cervix because baby is so low. The epidural was a god send, I relaxed and she brought in the peanut ball to help move things along as we’re on a time crunch since my water had been broken and it’s already 1pm. They roll me on my left side and baby’s heartrate plummets to 90s-100s and immediately the nurses come running in and flip me on my other side where everything returns to normal. By 4pm my OB comes back and I’m at a 4 but still only 80%, I’m feeling kinda defeated at this point but I’m trying to stay strong, we’re under a tornado warning and I’m scared, but my OB tells me that she’s leaving for the day because it’s her daughters birthday and another doctor will be on but to expect a csection because of her HR and orders to turn off the oxytocin for a hour. They come in and turn it back on and tell me that the night nurse will be the next person to check me and to stay relaxed. At this point, I’m so sick at my stomach, I’m begging for something so I don’t throw up but before they get back to me, I’m throwing up literally everywhere. I filled 3 vomit bags before the nurse was back, but after some Zofran I was feeling okay. 7:30 comes around and my new nurse comes in, checks me and says baby is way high still, so I explain that the last nurse said she was super low, so she checks my chart and sure enough, OB and nurse charts she’s low. Baby still was dropping her HR so the nurse tells me she’s going to call the doctor, I explained they told me that I would probably be having a csection and since I was still at a 4 I was okay with it because I wanted my baby out and healthy. 9pm comes around and the doctor finally gets there, she was caught in one of the tornados we had around us and couldn’t get here, so she came running in, luckily the nurses had already prepped me and got my husband ready to go. They grab me and start taking me to the OR. I let the lady know I was really nauseated and I throughly I was going to throw up, and she gives me Zofran, but it was a little late already and I ripped off my O2 mask and ended up throwing up all in this nurses shoes and all over her pants and myself as I’m bawling my eyes out trying to say how sorry I was. The doctor then tells me she’s going to get started because even with the oxytocin off, baby still wasn’t handling everything well and she wanted to get her out. So now I’m freaking out, my husbands not back here yet and I’m all alone in this freezing cold OR. About 3 minutes later they get him back in there with me and we wait. Doctor tells me that baby came out of position when we turned off the oxytocin and her head was in my hip, so every contraction pushed her little head in my hip. So they had to shove her up out of my hip and then she was stuck in my ribs so this nurse is literally on top of me pushing her down while the doctor vacuums her little head out and she finally made her appearance at 9:36 on Friday the 13th. They always told me I would have a big baby, another reason they didn’t want me to go past 40 weeks but little miss weighed 6lbs 9oz and was 18.5inches long.

I’ve gotten to enjoy this cutie for a week now and she’s absolutely perfect. The csection was more than worth it to ensure she was safe. My first question was “does she have downs?” Because she had an EFI during our anatomy ultrasound but the doctor laughed and said she’s perfectly healthy. She was a little jaundice and had to use the bili lights for a day, but her levels came down nicely and we were home by Sunday. Little miss Braelyn Alia. 💕

Sorry this is so long but I wanted to remember her story for as long as possible.