Yes, this story is about to be as long as it seems...

To start from the beginning, I went in for my 38 week appointment on Friday, August 2nd. I was hoping to talk my dr into doing a cervical check to see how dilated I was and ended up walking away without, after being told that I would most likely end up being induced over the weekend due to high blood pressure. My orders were to report to L&D for the following 3 days to get my blood pressure checked and if on any of those occasions either of my top or bottom numbers were elevated they would start the induction right then and there. My husband and I spent that night trying to get any last minutes errands and cleaning done, and getting absolutely no sleep. Saturday morning we went and had breakfast with some friends to take our minds off things for a bit and went in to the hospital around 10:30am. They were super busy. After checking in, they set me up in the antepartum unit for the blood pressure check. Every 15 minutes, for 45 minutes, the cuff would take my blood pressure and each time it came up high. It took another 2 hours for us to officially get admitted into labor and delivery, and then another 2 hours before they finally inserted the foley bulb at about 4pm. I was only 1 cm dilated and maybe 30% effaced when we started. Over the next 12 hours my husband and I hung out in our labor room waiting for things to happen, since we weren't allowed to leave the hospital. We saw 3 different fast and furious movies during that time and did a lot of talking. We hadn't yet decided on a name for our baby girl at that time, but before the foley came out we had pretty much made our decision. Foley was finally out at the 12 hour mark and at 3cm dilated, it was time to start pitocin. It was now Sunday. After 4 hours on the pitocin, I was checked again but making no progress. The dr decided it was best to switch methods and put me on an oral med to help ripen my cervix. I ended up doing 3 doses over the next 12 hours in order to make it to 4cm. The dr decided that because we had made enough progress we could restart pitocin. Once it finally started kicking I was feeling contractions more regularly and they were becoming fairly intense. I had hoped to make it a little further but I decided to go ahead and get and epidural. It worked, for the most part, but I could still feel my left side. Although I voiced it to the anesthesiologist, I was brushed off and told it would just take time or that I could lay on my left so it could move to the left by the gravity. I labored this way for longer than I can explain, becuase at this point I had pretty much lost track of time. The nurses helped me switch positions and my cervix was checked every 2 hours. I was progressing a cm at each check and finally reached 10cm around 11:00pm Monday night. It was finally time to start pushing, and pushing, and pushing. For almost 3 and a half hours. We didn't know it yet, but little lady was super stuck. I was given the option to try pushing for another hour or to go ahead with a c-section and at this point I was done and just ready to see my baby. So we moved forward with the c-section and since the epidural wasn't working the way it needed to the new anesthesiologist opted to do a spinal. The 30 minutes from the time they stopped the epidural until they wheeled me into the OR were the worst 30 minutes of my entire labor experience, probably the worst for my husband as well. I was feeling everything, it was all back labor, and the contractions were right on top of each other. I was so hot, sweaty, and in pain that I vomited multiple times in the extremely short trip from my room to the OR. It was rough. Once the spinal was placed, my husband was let into the room and they got started. During the entire surgery I was so anxious that my whole upper body was shaking. It didn't seem to take long for them to finally get our little one out but there was tons of tugging happening in order to get her out of my pelvis. It did take her a couple minutes to finally pink up and give a good cry but the dr said she was good. She was placed on my chest for the rest of the procedure. Turned out that she had pooped in the womb and had the cord wrapped around her neck twice. So despite working my hardest to avoid it, it was good that we had agreed to the c-section. It was quite the journey for her to arrive, but we're so happy she's finally here.

MacKenna Jo was finally born at 3:47am on August 6th, after 63 hours spent in labor and delivery.