Let me start by saying I had a really smooth pregnancy. No morning sickness or anything. The entire 9 months was smooth sailing. So at 33 weeks I was put on bed rest due to high blood pressure and had an induction date set.

Here’s my last bump picture at 36+6😭💗

So we got to the hospital around 5am. They took forever to start pitocin because for some reason they had to wait to discharge other patients before they could start inducing me. Around 6am a nurse came in to check my cervix..... Of all the useless advice I was given about pregnancy, NOBODY ever told me how bad it hurts to have your cervix checked. For those of you who are expecting, prepare yourselves. So the nurse checks me and I start screaming, crawling up the bed. I was sitting there crying & she stopped what she was doing to tell me to breath, at the point I started telling her to “hurry the f*ck up” and to “please get out of there”. 😂🤦🏻‍♀️ (P.S. I was dilated 2cm).

So finally around 9am a different nurse came in and she started my pitocin. About an hour or 2 later I started feeling the contractions, and I was smiling through them, because I was happy to know what contractions felt like. At that point they just felt like period cramps. Little did I know what was coming.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was getting his beauty sleep while I labored his daughter. 🙃🙃🙃

It was probably around 11am that the anesthesiologist came to give me the epidural. It really wasn’t that bad; it was like a burning sensation. The worst part was feeling the need to twitch my legs and not being allowed to move. So after that my doctor broke my water with some kind of long white plastic sword looking thing (????) and I was 4cm dilated. It was around that time that the contractions got painful. They were getting really strong. My nurse was coming in to give me an embolus (whatever that is) of the epidural whenever she could. After about an hour of painful contractions I stopped feeling them. I was even able to take a quick cat nap. There was about 2 hours of smooth sailing before I started feeling the contractions again.

Then they got closer together again and were gaining intensity, but I could still talk through them. Around this time I was 6cm, and the nurse had me try the peanut ball. The peanut ball made everything so much stronger and intense. Within the hour I was almost 8cm and baby wasn’t dropped very much, so they removed the peanut ball and had me sit straight up to let gravity do its job of helping the baby drop down. After another 30 mins we did the peanut ball again. This is when things really picked up speed. I don’t know why but any kind of noise during my contractions was the most irritating thing and I didn’t understand why everybody wouldn’t just shut up. I was snapping at everybody, visitors and nurses alike.

At this point my boyfriend was in a chair next to my bed, being a saint. Rubbing my head and giving my sips of water, saying encouraging things like “you’re doing great, she’s almost here” and I was in so much pain all I could say was “yeah I know please be quiet” 🤦🏻‍♀️but he took it like a champ. Around this time I was feeling pressure down there, but I didn’t tell the nurses because I knew pressure meant it was time to push, and I got nervous all of a sudden so I kept my mouth shut 😂 After about another 15 mins with the peanut ball I was DONE. I was in so much pain and I blamed it on the peanut ball. I called my nurse in and was whining about “I’m done with this thing get rid of it I’m in so much pain” and at that point she decided to check me and I was 10cm.

I asked the nurse to give me another embolus (still don’t know what that is🤣) of the epidural, and right when she was about to, I was like “wait, I’m feeling pressure” and she checked me and told me it was time to start pushing. Then she tells me we need to wait for my doctor to get to the hospital. I’m like, “SHE’S NOT HERE?!”

Keep in mind it was like 8:00pm on a Friday night, so of course my doctor had other things to do with her life, but in the moment I didn’t understand why she wasn’t at the hospital tending to my every need, waiting for me to start pushing😂 It felt like an eternity before she finally got there. Every 5 minutes I was like “IS SHE HERE YET?”

I was really feeling the need to push, and feeling the pressure to push and NOT being able to is insanely painful. My nurse decided that the baby hadn’t dropped much so a couple practice pushes wouldn’t hurt. My boyfriend, who swore he didn’t wanna witness the delivery, was all up in my business, watching as I pushed, just waiting to see her head appear. At one point the nurse left the room to go see what was taking the doctor so long, and I felt the urge to push while she was gone, but I couldn’t push without her. I was yelling at my boyfriend like “WHY would she leave, I have to PUSH, why the f*ck would she leave?!” And when she came back I asked her to never leave me ever again 😅🤦🏻‍♀️

FINALLY, after what seemed like an eternity, my doctor arrived. I couldn’t feel anything down there, I couldn’t even tell if I was pushing. My doctor said if I’d been anymore numb I wouldn’t be able to push at all. (Thank GOD the nurse didn’t give me that extra embolus earlier). After this it was all a blur. I pushed 3 times for 10 seconds during each contraction, and then somewhere in the middle of it all I heard someone say she had a full head of hair. Then some more pushing, and I hear the most beautiful cry, and someone says, “she’s got long toes.” In that moment I felt the biggest relief of my life. I looked up at the doctor holding my daughter and the emotion I felt was indescribable.

Due to anxiety, I spent my whole pregnancy thinking I was gonna lose my baby. I was convinced I would either miscarry or delivery a stillborn. So imagine the relief I felt when I looked up and saw my healthy, living, breathing babygirl, screaming her head off.

Lacey Nicole Rush was born on May 3rd at 9:01pm, weighing exactly 7lbs and was exactly 19 inches long.

Being pregnant is the REASON I graduated high school. If it weren’t for my daughter I would’t have had the motivation to get passing grades and finish school. My daughter saved my education.

After delivery, I had a nurse who I absolutely loved. She was very sympathetic to the fact that I’m a young mom. I think she could sense that I was scared and confused. I was overwhelmed beyond belief and she had my back. Also, this nurse showed up at my HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION. Turns out (small world) she is a family member of one of the girls in my graduating class, so she happened to be there to see me walk across the stage, exactly 2 weeks postpartum. After the ceremony she came up to me, yelling my name, telling me how proud she was of me.

This is us.

And this is me and my boyfriend. We graduated high school on May 17th and I am SO proud of us.

And this picture below is me with the only friends I had who stuck by my side before, during band after my pregnancy.

And this is my family.💗