My due date was September 20th. I didn’t feel like I was close to being ready and felt like my pregnancy would last forever. On the 19th I woke up and took a shower. Baby is usually very active but I went almost five hours with very few movements, so I went in to the hospital. I got an ultrasound that said baby’s fluid was low and I needed to be induced.

They assured me everything would be fine and induced me at 12:30pm on the 20th. I went home to wait it out.

At 5:30pm I had excruciating pain in my lower back that had me doubled over and in tears. I thought that was odd and called the hospital. The nurse asked me if my water had broken or if my contractions were closer than 3 minutes apart lasting longer than 90 seconds. At this point I hadn’t felt any “period like cramps” so I said no and she told me to wait it out.

At 9:00pm the pain in my back was so bad I felt sick to my stomach, had terrible diarrhea and my legs felt weak. My husband took me in despite not having contractions or my water breaking.

Turns out I WAS having contractions... in my back and was in “back labour” which can happen when the baby is facing your belly button and their back is pressed against yours.

I honestly can’t even put into words to describe how intense the pain was. I had back pain before from being hit by a car and this was 100 xs worse.

What made matters worse is the hospital was insanely busy and there were no nurses available to take me to a birthing suite until after 5:00am. I was crying, doubled over, throwing up, still having crazy diarrhea and was just praying to whatever god would listen for all of this to be over.

Got into the birthing suite, and got an epidural right away. Pushed for two hours before baby had to be vacuumed.

After all of that... I finally had my beautiful baby girl!!

Completely healthy! Totally worth it!