40w4d yesterday I went in for an induction because baby didn’t want to come out on her own. We started oxytocin at 8:45am. Things were starting to look up and in two hours I went from 2cm dilated to 3cm dilated. It was a slow process but I was happy to wait it out. Then they put the Foley Bulb in around 12pm, that lasted a few hours (I think around 4ish it came out) and they told me it should come out at 5cm. It was painful. I know some people tolerate it well enough but it’s a little more uncomfortable than a cervical exam and it’s constant (my biggest issue is that it stays there for hours and the pressure was not fun). Well that finally fell out and the pain was getting bad, I asked for the doctor some point around 5 but he couldn’t get there for about an hour and a half because he was with another patient. I was begging to be checked because if this was 5cm I wanted the damn epidural! He finally comes to check on me and I’m 8cm fully effaced. At this point it was probably 8/10 on the pain scale. Knowing I was further along than I thought really helped me to buckle down and stay in the mindset of getting through this. He left and my waters broke on the next contraction 6:40pm. At some point I felt like I had to push. At 9cm and my body took over. If you don’t really know how to push going in, nature has a way of figuring it out. It was at this point I started a chant of “I can’t do this, I need an epidural” guess what? I totally did this. No pain meds whatsoever, only oxytocin, saline/sugar drip, and pure adrenaline my body made itself. My beautiful little Virgo made her entrance into the world at 7:19pm @ 8lbs 9oz, 20.25inches. She is currently in the NICU due to a knot in her cord (apparently super rare) and meconium in her lungs (kind of typical). I have no pictures yet as they have been running tests, taking X-rays, and she’s in a Cpap machine.