I had a membrane sweep on 1/30/2020 at 40+2 at 1.5 cm dilated and 40% effaced. Head was in -3 station, so she hadn’t moved down all that much. On 1/31 in the morning, I had a pedicure and told the nail tech that I was overdue and hoped to go into labor soon. She gave me a good massage on the reflex points on my calves and feet.

After that I started cramping a lot, lost my mucus plug and had my bloody show. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, after bouncing on my yoga ball, I noticed a small trickle of fluid. I thought it was more mucus, but it kept happening when I would move from sitting to standing.

Around 7:30 at night, I decided to try and rest since I’ve had horrible insomnia for several weeks. I had another gush of fluid around 8:45, and I called my doctor’s night line. The on call nurse said it sounded like my water was breaking and to go on in to L&D. I got admitted around 10:15, and had steady contractions around 2-3 minutes apart ever since. I progressed slowly... about 1cm every 2-3 hours, but her head was getting really low and I was pretty much 100% effaced by 3 in the morning.

I started with a dose of Stadol at 2:30 in the morning, and it took the edge off of the pain for about an hour.

I wimped our and got the epidural at 3cm (around 4:30AM), because my SPD made it feel like my pelvis was snapping in half with each contraction.

After the epidural took effect, things progressed very nicely!

They checked me at 8:30 and I had progressed to 6 cm. I was subconsciously fighting the contractions when I could feel them, so the epidural was the perfect solution for me to be able to continue laboring.

Also around 8:30, they noticed I had a fever. I had chorioamnionitis... basically an intra-amniotic infection due to my water breaking early. They put me on Tylenol and an antibiotic IV drip to bring the fever down while I was still in labor.

They did another dilation check at 11:45AM, and I was 9cm. By that point, my fever had started reducing.

A little after noon, I was complete, and began pushing around 12:30 PM. My husband, bless him, wanted to stay up at the head of the bed and cheer me on, but I only had one nurse attending, so she needed him to hold my other leg while I pushed 😂

It wasn’t quite what he had planned on, but he was fantastic about it!

For most of the pushes, I pushed every other contraction to conserve energy, and she was having decelerations when I would push, so they put me on oxygen between the pushes. Once the Dr. got there, I pushed every contraction.

After a long time pushing (it didn’t seem that long to me), my little girl, Lillian Ruth, was born at 2:07 PM on February 1st! She was 8lbs 1.5oz, 21.5 inches long. She’s been such a joy to us and we love her to pieces!

As far as recovery goes, I had a second degree tear and a few lacerations, and some blood loss... I’m now considered anemic (so I’m still on iron pills to up my hemoglobin). But I would honestly do it all over again for this little girl!

Here she is right after birth:

And here she is at 2 weeks old