May 14th

My birth story!

My baby girl was born on May 14th! She was 4 days past due. On mother's Day I was awaken by a contraction at 7 a.m. and I knew it was labor with how painful it was. I waited a few hours to wake my husband up because my OB told me there was no reason to come to the hospital unless my water broke or my contractions were 5 or less minuets apart for an hour. We waiting until they were coming between 7 and 5 minutes apart and headed to the hospital. My cervix was only dilated 1.5cm and they gave me two options since I was trying to avoid induction. 1. I could stay in triage for hours waiting for an available delivery room to start induction which they didn't want me to do since I was also trying to avoid an epidural and I was told induction without an epidural can be brutal. 2. I could go home and labor until I just absolutely couldn't stand it anymore and my contractions were closer to 5-3 minutes apart and hopefully by then I'd be dilated. It was a hard decision but we decided to go home. I labored all night and all the next morning until 12p.m. when I was in so much pain I was sobbing and my contractions were coming very close. We went back to the hospital and finally I'd made progress and was dilated to 4cm! We were sent straight to a delivery room. Now at this point it was 1p.m. on the 13th and I had been awake laboring since 7a.m. on the 12th so I was completely exhausted. I tried really hard to not be medicated. I tried gas and air for a few hours and it was nice at first but the pain was so bad and I was so tired I couldn't do it anymore. I had to have an epidural. Once that was placed I was able to sleep about 2 hours and then one spot in my abdomen wasn't taking the epidural so I was in pain again. I wasn't dilating fast enough and I was so exhausted they decided it was best to break my water and start a low dose pitocin drip and I finally dilated all the way. I pushed for 2 1/2 hours with my amazing husband holding me up the entire time and finally at 9:26 a.m. on the 14th my precious daughter was born at 9lbs 11oz! The delivery team couldn't believe how big she was with how small I am. I was quite shocked myself as she was only estimated to be 7-8lbs. In total I was in labor for a little over 50 hours! Though it was very long and painful it truly was an amazing experience and I would do it 100x over again for my daughter.