On September 22nd, my brother got married in another state and my entire family was there. I had always said because this pregnancy was so difficult, I knew she'd wait to come until that day, when we'd have no help with our older daughter. Well all that day, I was feeling cramps and contractions- nothing new for me. But something felt off and when my husband came home from work, I told him I had a feeling baby was coming very soon. We did our daily walk, came back, and I started timing contractions: 3-4 minutes apart. After two hours, and a shower, they were getting closer. I was very worried I'd get sent home but I decided it was best to go. Came in and monitored for an hour, went from a 4 to 5 1/2! Admitted finally and we managed to find someone to watch our daughter ! An hour later, no progress and my contractions were two minutes apart. So the dr on call broke my water for me! He told me if I didn't progress further in another hour he'd give me pitocin to get things going. Well an hour later I was at a 6 1/2! But the dr decided to give it to me anyways as I had been hurting for a while and he didn't want me suffering longer than necessary. I had gone in with the intention of trying to be completely natural, but once he said pitocin, I was like nope! I have nothing to prove, I'm happy I got as far as I did. Well I'm highly allergic to fentanyl, which is in epidurals so they had to make a special one for me, and it wasn't as strong as a normal one. Which I liked because I was still able to feel everything. With my first I couldn't feel a thing and I hated that, I wanted to be able to know what was going on. So I napped for an hour, and woke up to a strong pressure to need to poop. The nurse came in, she checked and I was 9 1/2! She said she suspects about 15 minutes. Two minutes later I'm telling her I need to push, I'm at a 10. I push two times and they tell me to stop and wait for the dr. I pushed 5 more times and baby Charlotte was born! Active labor was only 7 hours total! 3:49 AM, 20 inches long, 8lbs 5oz, I had her at 38 weeks and five days. She is perfectly healthy! And labor was so easy, as is recovery. I was up walking two hours later, very small tearing, and I asked to leave after a day which they allowed. Charlotte is 8 days old now, and the sweetest baby ❤️