Finally posting my little man’s birth story. Sorry for the long post, but it was a long process. He was not supposed to come until the end of June, but my water broke on Monday May 21. We headed to the hospital, where they confirmed I was leaking amniotic fluid (it was a slow leak). I was admitted to the antepartum unit for observation, and they waited to see if my body would go into labor. Well, it didn’t 😕. I had no contractions at all and my cervix was still too think and closed. Tuesday morning, they started misoprostol to soften my cervix. Took all day (3 doses) to get it softened. Wednesday morning around 6 I was moved to L&D; to start pitocin. I ended up getting to the max dose (20 mcg) before my body was contracting enough to do anything to my cervix. By Wednesday night, I was still only at a 2, and I about lost it. I had not taken any pain med, and couldn’t take it anymore. My nurse told me that she had never seen anyone get past 6 mcg of pitocin without pain meds. My body was saturated with pitocin, so they turned it off for the night. Thursday morning, I took the epidural and restarted pitocin. Once I was able to relax, labor went much faster. I was at 5 by noon, and 8 by 1 pm. Shortly after, it was time to push. My little man was born at 1:53 in May 24, almost 72 hours after my water broke. It wasn’t half an hour after birth that my little man was taken to NICU. His blood sugar was only 31 at birth, and dropped to 12 after a bottle. He needed an IV with dextrose to maintain his sugar, which he ended up being on for almost 3 days before they were able to turn it off. His bilirubin was also high, so he needed to be under the Bili light all day Saturday. The hard part was I was discharged Saturday and was unable to stay, so I had to leave my little boy in the NICU while I went home. We were finally able to bring him home Monday afternoon. I was not feeling well at all, but assumed it was due to the stress of NICU and after pains from labor. My mom came over Tuesday evening while my husband went to work, and she could tell something was wrong. I took my blood pressure: 179/110. We had to go back to the hospital. My MIL came to stay with my little boy, and I had to leave him again. I was put on magnesium sulfate for 24 hours to make sure I didn’t have any seizures. I was being treated for postpartum Pre-eclampsia, which I didn’t realize was a thing. I had always heard the cure for Pre-eclampsia was delivery. Apparently, it is rare but possible to get Pre-eclampsia after birth. It wasn’t until Thursday that I was able to go home. For the first week of my baby’s life, I spent more time away from him than with him. Now that we are all home and I am feeling much better, everything is settling down. I just wanted to share our story to let everyone know that things may not go as planned and it can be a rough road, but there is hope at the end of the tunnel.