This might be a little bit long,but here we go.

Just a little back story, my fiancé works out of state a lot. So leading up to our due date we were both getting nervous he wouldn’t make it since we live in California and he’s currently working in Washington DC.

On July 8th at 10:43 pm, my water broke. So I called my fiancé to let him know he needed to get on the first flight home. I called the hospital and they told me to go ahead and take a warm shower and eat a good snack then come in around 1:15 am since I wasn’t having contractions yet.

I took my shower had some peanut butter and crackers, My parents, sister, and I got everything into the car and away we went.

We get to the hospital and get checked in pretty quickly since they were expecting us. The doctor comes in and checks to make sure my water had broke and there was another gush of fluid, so we started joking that if it wasn’t broke then it is now. She came back said I was at 3cm, and we had to wait for a room. Then the contractions started.

We finally get into a room after about 2 1/2 hours of waiting and they start pitocin. They would come in and check my vitals every 30 minutes and after a while the contractions started getting a little stronger. Around 7 another doctor comes in and checks me and I’m at 3 1/2cm. It was a little disheartening but cool, baby is buying his daddy some time to make it!

My dad leaves to go pick up my fiance, and by this time the contractions are getting to the point where I want to just shoot up from the bed every time they hit. At this point it’s 11:30, I know my fiancé’s plane should be landing any minute, so I’m trying to hold off on the epidural until he gets there but the contractions are getting worse and worse by the second. Finally after being in active labor for 13 hours I decide to get the epidural. They come check me and I’m still at 3 1/2cm.

Around 6pm a doctor comes in and tells me to prepare for a c-section as I’m not progressing past 4 cm and little man doesn’t want to come down AT ALL. At this point, I just want what’s best for me and the baby, my epidural is starting to not work and I’m starving. (Ice chips only help for so long). Then there’s a shift change, so new doctor, new plan. She comes in and says I’m at a 6. So I’m like thank god, let’s see what happens. Around 10:30 she comes in checks again and says I’m at a 10 but the baby is still not coming down. She tells me to wait a little bit and we will see what he decides to do.

By this point I’m exhausted, I’m starving, and my nurse took away my ice chips. I don’t know why, but in that moment it made me so upset I start crying. The doctor comes back in about an hour later and tells me to push for 2 hours and hope the baby decides to come down. After 2 1/2 hours of pushing I’m in extreme pain and physically cannot lift my leg on my own. This is when I decided I was done. I told my fiancé I want a c-section and the nurse calls the doctor. The doctor comes in and checks me again and my little dude still had not engaged into the birth canal and agrees the c-section was the best route. Half an hour later I was being prepped to go into surgery. And then I get a fever... at this point they are concerned about infection since my water had been broke for over 24 hours. After what felt like an eternity, I was completely numb, my fiancé was holding my hand, and he’s watching the entire surgery telling me what’s going on.

Then I heard the words I was waiting for “time of birth 2:43 am.” Then I heard the baby cry, and both me and my fiancé start crying. He went to see the baby, cut the cord, and showed me a picture of him. When I got into recovery I was finally able to hold him and I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love.

After being put into a postpartum room, we got a couple hours of sleep. The nurse noticed the baby’s respiratory rate was high so he was taken to NICU to be observed for a few days and to be put on iv antibiotics just to make sure he did not get an infection because I was running a fever. After rounds of blood work they concluded that he just had some extra fluid in his lungs and he was a perfectly healthy baby, so we were sent home.

Bryson Gunnar was born July 10,2018 at 2:43 am.

6 pound and 3 ounces

19 1/2 inches long