24 hour labor in August

My son was born august 18, 2018 in Seattle. I was 40 weeks 4 days pregnant and was miserable since it was a pretty warm summer here in Seattle with no AC. I had went to my cousins the night before and felt miserably hot and uncomfortable. I went to bed and woke up about 3 am on August 17th with some intense back pain. It wasn’t anything that o wasn’t used to since I had had bad back pain the last 3 weeks of my pregnancy, but this time it felt worse. It was a constant ache so I didnt think it was contractions. I kept trying to stretch and find a comfortable position and almost woke my husband up to massage me, but eventually I fell back asleep. I woke up at 7:20 am. I rolled over in bed to face my husband and felt wetness. I immediately sat up in bed and more wetness seemed to gush out. I told my husband I think my water broke. My office opened at 8 am so I waited to call and I was honestly concerned that it might not be my water since it wasn’t still coming out. I started to put my stuff in the car since I knew they would have me come in still and then called my office. I went in and they checked me and said I was 1 cm dilated and my water was definitely broken. I got admitted right away. I took a shower that morning in the hospital and had my mom sister and husband there. Contractions had started but I really couldn’t feel them so I started walking the hospital floor. I could start feeling them around noon but they were just barely uncomfortable. My doctor recommended I take a pill to induce the labor at this point and I did. This made the contractions more regular but still not intense. She checked me about 4 pm and said my water was only partially ruptured and she could break it fully. She did so on this check and then let me tell you those contractions picked up and were intense almost immediately after that. My sister and mom left me to labor with my husband at that point. I got in a tub since I was attempting to do this with no epidural. I labored for hours in the tub. It was about 3:30 am when I finally got out and practically begged my nurse to check me since I was hoping that I was close. The back pain was jntense and I was almost passing out in the tub. I was a 6 so I got the epidural at 4 am since I wanted to not feel like i was passing out when pushing. The struggle was real at this point. The anesthesiologist got there within 20 minutes thankfully and omg the epidural totally numbed me. It was strong and I loved it. My obgyn came to check me at that point and I was already at a 9.5! The epidural likely relaxed me allowing my labor to speed up. Except she foubd out why I had felt such intense back pain was that baby was head down but face up. She wanted him to rotate so she gave me a peanut ball to put between my legs and then encouraged me to sleep an hour or two before pushing in the hopes that baby would turn. His heart rate kept dropping so nurses kept coming in telling me to roll to the other side which was not the right side to encourage baby to turn. My doctor would come in and say go back to the original side so I basically didn’t get much sleep despite how exhausted I was. Finally I fell asleep once baby was doing okay. My doctor woke me at about about 7 am and said let’s start practice pushes with my nurse. She said baby was literally right there and that he had turned in the right position. I am a ftm so they expected it to take at least an hour of pushing, but when I started it only took about 5 contractions and maybe 20 minutes to push baby out. I had a minor tear that required one stitch and a beautiful baby boy. Unfortunately baby had low glucose levels so was admitted to the NICU for three days but he went home after that and is a very healthy happy baby. To all the mamas planning a natural birth, I say go for it! But dont beat yourself up if you don’t make it without an epidural. It was a pretty amazing experience laboring in the tub but I think for my particular birth it was best to get the epidural since it allowed my body to relax and honestly the amount of back pain I had I think it may have been a bit traumatizing to try to push in that amount of pain for me. Despite all the ups and downs, I loved my birth experience and absolutely adore my sweet baby boy. Good luck mamas!