I have been in the July 2018 birth club but I guess I’ll be switching to this group since my baby girl made her arrival yesterday at 7:51am!

I started having contractions at around 8:30pm on 06/25 and timed them for about two hours and decided that it was best that I go to the hospital and get checked out. I got there and I was still only dilated to a 3 after an hour (I had been a 3 for 3 weeks) so I was sent home. I was still contracting at home, so husband and I decided to do the baby dance and help the contractions. I went to sleep around 1:15 am and was woken up at 4:41am to a pretty intense contraction. I knew that these were the real deal because they weren’t just my abdomen contracting, I felt it in my pelvic area as well. I kept having them and we decided to head back to the hospital at 5:15am. We arrived and I got up to the labor and delivery unit and had to fill out a form and my water broke while I was filling it out. They put me in an assessment room and checked me again and I was at about a 4-5. They put me in a delivery room about 6am and started hooking me up to some of their wireless monitors. I wanted to be wireless so I could move around during labor since I didn’t want any pain meds. Once I was all hooked up, they left me to labor for a while. My doctor came in about 7:15 and notified me that she had two “small” surgeries to do but then would be back to deliver my baby. I was like “okay, sounds good because the contractions were coming in twos but they would space out like 6 minutes apart. I figured I still had a couple of hours to labor. I was standing up by the side of the bed, leaning over it each time I had a contraction to try to make the pain better. I kept telling myself “I can do anything for one minute!” That was my mantra throughout my labor pains. Anyway, I had a pretty strong contraction and I told my Aunt who was in the room that I think I did want some pain meds, at least through my IV. She told my other two kids to get out of the room and then went out to tell the nurse that and they came back and I was literally like hanging on the IV pole doubled over in pain. The nurse was like “she wasn’t acting like this 15 minutes ago!” As I heard her say that, I felt the STRONGEST contraction ever push my baby right down the birth canal. Still standing by the bed, I was screaming to everyone in the room, “the baby’s is coming!” I felt the baby’s head crown and everything! I told them that her head was out. They came around to check me and sure enough, the baby’s head was out! The nurse told my aunt to call for another nurse, my husband ran out of the room to try to get someone from the nurses station, and I was instructed to actually get ON the bed. While all of this commotion was going on, I had about a 15-20 second break to get on the bed before the next contraction came and the rest of my baby was pushed out. I didn’t push AT ALL, my body and gravity did everything for me! There was one nurse, two grandmothers, and no husband in the room! She was born at 7:51am weighing 7lbs 12oz and 20in long. She gave everyone an entrance that we won’t forget!

My doctor came by later and was shocked that I had given birth so quickly! She told me that one of her coworkers told her that I had delivered already and she said that she was in shock because we had just spoke to each other!

(We have a small joke about the delivery; I was wearing the mesh panties during my labor and when her head was out, I still had them on. My aunt said that had it not been for the panties, my baby possibly could have ended up on the floor. My husband then started calling them multi-purpose panties! The panties were literally a life saver!)

The whole birth was a whirlwind, but looking at her precious face makes it so worth it!