So we are 3 days postpartum today. Currently everyone is doing amazing (aside from still being exhausted), baby had her first checkup and she is “just perfect.” I’m still sore, but I’m feeling more and more like myself every day. Now let’s jump back to Friday... yeah... Friday.

I will preface this and say, this is Baby #3 for me. My oldest 2 are ages 10 and 8.

For the last two weeks prior, I have been back to work. Friday was my last shift before the weekend and towards the end, I started feeling contractions. I started timing them around an hour before my shift ended (8pm). They were gradually getting closer and closer together but had stayed pretty consistent in strength. They were about 3-5 minutes apart and had been getting closer together as my shift went on. I had called my mom about 30 minutes into timing them and let her know she may need to pick up my other two kids from home so my SO could meet me at the hospital (which is right next to my workplace).

At the end of my shift, they still weren’t getting stronger, but we’re still around 3-5 minutes apart. I decided to head home and see what happened after I showered... same situation. We decided to go to the hospital and my mom picked up the kids. This was around 10pm. Long story short, the hospital sent us home. My contractions weren’t effective and I was still only 1cm dilated, where I’ve been for the last 2 weeks. 😞

We went home and rested as much as we could. My contractions never stopped the whole night. Once I got up and started moving around in the morning, my contractions got much stronger. Like to the point I had to kind of stop in my tracks and wait them out. But they weren’t consistent or even remotely close enough together (about 10-15 minutes apart). I kept holding off on going back to the hospital because I didn’t want to get sent home again. At some point they started picking up

And would be around 4-7 minutes apart... but then would drop back down to 10-15 minutes apart. But they hurt! I showered and that did nothing. At some point my SO noticed me kind of leaning over on the dining room table and breathing through them and forced me to go to the hospital. We went in around 4:15 pm Saturday. They hooked me up to the NST and checked my cervix. 4 cm and 90% effaced. I was in labor! Hallelujah!

They moved me to L&D and I was officially admitted around 5:30. Around 7:15 I had only dilated to 5 cms and they decided to break my water. By 8:30 I was at 6cms and at 8:45 they finally did my Covid test (it was negative). At 10:30 I was finally at 8. I was not progressing super fast considering my prior 2 were labors were only about 6 hours each. During all this my nurse helped me do different labor exercises with the birthing ball and peanut. She was absolutely amazing and so sweet. I highly recommend asking for these things if they aren’t immediately offered. Some positions were uncomfortable at first but helped in the end.

At this point I decided to sorta go against my birthing plan of no pain meds and decided on IV pain meds. They gave me a half dose since I was passed the standard cutoff of 7cms. Basically from this point on is all kind of a blur (not from the drugs which really cut the pain... but made me super sleepy... and chatty. But just because I was so exhausted). For hours they would check and tell me I was at 8, 8.5, 9... maybe 9.5... I was literally begging them to just let me push... but no. Not far enough. Finally around 1 am my nurse was like “I think your cervix is swollen.” She got the doctor and the doctor confirmed. They went over my options. Basically if I tried to push passed it I could tear my cervix and that could be incredibly bad. They said I could still get an epidural or we could keep doing the exercises or she could try giving me Benadryl to help bring the swelling down. I opted to get an epidural. I figured I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from pushing for much longer and this would be the safest bet. Well, we had to wait about 20-30 minutes for the anesthesiologist. During this time I am pretty sure I destroyed my SO’s back as I used him to brace myself during some crazy hard contractions. He took it like a champ. When the anesthesiologist finally arrived and we started prepping for the epidural I had the strongest contractions ever. It seemed like forever for him to get it done and while he was doing his thing my nurse was looking at my doctor like “I think it’s time. I think she’s ready.” Literally as soon as he was done they checked me and Dallas says he could already see the top of baby’s head. After about 3 sets of contractions and pushing and rest she was finally born at 2:02 AM Sunday, June 14. She weighed 7lbs 7.2ozs and was 19 inches long.

Our little Evelynn Rae was worth all the pain her big ole’ head put me through. She was born on her grandpa’s, who passed about 10 years ago, birthday. Her middle name, Rae, is an homage to that same grandpa. ❤️

She is absolutely perfect! And hairy! 😂

Thanks for reading. I’m sorry it’s so long and maybe more detailed than necessary. I tried to text my mom milestones so that she could keep up since she wasn’t there and it turned into a good way to note times and such. If anyone has any questions about our journey, I’m happy to answer them. Much love and good luck future mamas!