I’m finally taking the time to write down my birth story. Throughout my pregnancy I had high blood pressure. At 35 weeks my doctor told me to stop working and be out on modified bed rest due to high blood pressure and large amount of protein in my urine. For the next two weeks I had to come in for non-stress tests every couple of days. I was told the signs of preeclampsia and was instructed to go to Labor and Delivery if I started to have any symptoms including headaches. On Monday January 29th just before midnight I had a headache that wouldn’t go away. My husband and I decided to make our way to the hospital just to get checked out. They checked my blood pressure and it was quite high, they called my OB and he decided to admit me. I was admitted at 12:30am Tuesday 1/30. We spent all of Tuesday being monitored. I was 0% effaced and 0% dilated. Tuesday night they inserted the cervadil. Wednesday morning I had softened a little bit but no other progress. We then started doses of cytotec under the tongue. Each dose would begin contractions that would eventually taper off. Wednesday we did 5 doses of the cytotec and I had only dilated to a 1 and softened 50%. They decided to do another round of cervadil Thursday night. Friday morning I had dilated to a 2 and softened a bit more. They attempted to break my water. They weren’t successful in breaking my water. I haven’t even heard of that happening before! They decided to start pitocin to see if we could get things going. I was on pitocin for 7 hours and no contractions! Nothing happening down there. They finally decided to send me home. They figured they had saturated my body so much that they needed to give it a break. We went home Friday night. A few hours after leaving I laid down in bed to do kick counts and was not feeling baby move. We called the hospital and they told us to come back. We went back Friday night, they checked baby and he was fine. He must have flipped and was kicking towards the back now. They decided to keep me and restart induction in the morning. Saturday morning we started with the foley ballon. Which is basically a catheter inserted to make you dilate. When you get to 3 cm it falls out. Around noon the ballon fell out. They then proceeded to break my water. Which worked this time. Then they started pitocin. Contractions started coming strong and close together. My husband was incredible the whole time. Suggesting different positions, getting me whatever I needed, and being a huge support. It was the most incredible pain I had ever felt. I don’t even know how to describe it. After 15 hours of labor on pitocin I finally reached a 10. Unfortunately there was a small part of my cervix that still had not softened and because of that I couldn’t push. If I did I would have torn my cervix. I had to labor at 10cm for 2 hours before it finally softened all the way. I was finally able to push, it took 30 minutes of pushing to get him out. My baby boy was born February 4th at 4:54am at exactly 38 weeks. I ended laboring for 17 hours on pitocin and was able to deliver without an epidural. Just had just a small tear, I was feeling great by the next day. It was an amazing end to the most exhausting and frustrating week of my life. My baby boy is 12 weeks now and is doing fantastic. Meeting all his milestones and even just started rolling over. It was incredibly hard to bring him into this world but he is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.