Baby is 1 week old today, born 1/21/20 at 41w 4d. My last day of work was 1/20/20 since I was set to be induced on 1/22/20. I had an appt the morning of 1/20 and was still at 2cm dilated, I was 1cm previously for 4 weeks with no progress. He didn’t do a sweep, just checked me and scheduled my induction.

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The evening of 1/20 around 6pm after getting home from work, I started having some mild abdominal discomfort. Not quite period cramps more like the feeling you get when you have to poop but are constipated (LOL) 🤣 The whole night the pains were getting worse so I decided to start timing them. Now I’m a FTM so I had no idea what contractions felt like nevertheless how to even time them. Around 10pm I called the nurses line at my OB’s office and waited for a call back from the on-call doctor. He calls back and I explain I think I’ve been having contractions since 6pm, and I told him I was at 2cm at my appt that morning. He brushed me off saying it was my first baby so I should just relax, lay on my left side, drink water, take a bath, etc. because he was so sure it was just Braxton-Hicks. I’m no doctor so I took his advice and did all of the above.

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1/21, 12am rolls around and I’m in excruciating pain. I’m trying to manage the contractions but they became too much. I was tired and in and out of it so I decided to call the OB line again to speak to DR because I can’t just go into L&D without DR calling in ahead of time. The answering service couldn’t get a hold of him aka: he didn’t wanna answer his phone at 12am. I wait and wait for a call back until 2am I couldn’t hold it anymore. Contractions were coming every 5-10 minutes apart sporadically but the pain was so intense I got my BF up grabbed our bags and headed to the hospital anyway. At this point the DR still hadn’t called me back. The answering service pages him about 10-12 times with no answer.

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I get to L&D and of course they’re upset I just decided to show up. I explained DR wouldn’t call me back. Whatever ok. They ask is this your first baby? I say yes. They kind of look at each other like “🙄🙄🙄” and she says I’m going to take you into this small room just to check you it’s normally slow for first time moms and you don’t look too much in pain. I’m like whatever bitch check me 😑🤬. She checks me and stays quiet. Gathers her things and says ok just follow me. I say how far am I? She says 4. I’m fuming as fuck. No one wanted to believe me. If I would have waited longer I could’ve had a baby at home! So now the nurses start panicking, making calls at the station, “we need anesthesia, call the DR, call the pediatrician, call the midwife” going crazy. I quickly progress to a 5 on my own. I’m begging for an epidural but being it’s 2am I had to wait for the anesthesiologist to come in from home and he took his sweet ass time. I’m fucking screaming, moaning, trying to breathe through contractions. 😫 Luckily he gets there and he’s the sweetest thing ever. Gets my epidural in first try and boy am I fucking glad I got it. Instant relief. I didn’t even feel it going in because the contractions were killing me slowly.

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I get some much needed sleep and woke up and was at 8cm. Epidural wore off on one side due to my scoliosis. I labored while screaming and crying til I got to 10cm. Next thing I know I tell her I have to push. She tells me not to because although I was at 10 I had a small lip of cervix left and she didn’t want me to force push. They put the peanut ball in and I’m feeling everything at this point. I want to push.

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Finally she lets me start pushing, I pushed for an hour. Had to get an episiotomy done, and finally at 2:48pm, 1/21/20 my little boy was born, 7lbs 6oz. The episiotomy caused me to have to get one long running stitch. Currently recovery from that has been super painful, and I wake up everyday I get up feeling like I got run over by a semi. But Baby is doing great. Little bit of jaundice but otherwise amazing.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re great. 🥰