My water broke while I was sleeping (11:30pm) at 28 weeks 6 days. I woke up and noticed the bed was wet and called my doctor to ask what to do. She told me to immediately get to the hospital and she would call to tell them I was coming. No one met me at the doors and I had to walk like 1/2 a mile through the hospital and up three floors to the labor ward.

After I checked in they finally got me a wheelchair and took me to a room and stopped my labor. They claim I had been in labor “at least for most of the day” and I had no idea.

At 32 weeks, midnight, the little twerp decided he had enough and was ejecting from the cockpit (no pun intended I swear) and again I woke up in labor. This time I actually felt the contractions though and at first I thought:

I soon discovered as many women do that all was indeed not fine and..

I asked for narcotics because I had read they were somehow better for the baby than epidurals were, and I had it in my head I would do this absolutely without an epidural. How very wrong I was, because I instantly began projectile vomiting and the narcotics did *nothing* for the pain. At one point (after I threw up into my fifth or sixth vomit bag) the nurse handed me a small cup with pills in them. She said, “take these Tylenol, they’ll help the pain”

I said to this well meaning but clearly brain dead nurse that I would “just throw them back up” and she snapped at me to “just take them anyway”.

But hey, I appreciate being charged $9 a pill. Really. It was great.

Finally around 6am the anesthesiologist arrived and declared I could have an epidural.

The needle hurt, and it was mega uncomfortable laying on it since it was in my back, but I didn’t care. I finally got to sleep for an hour. Around 7am a nurse woke me and said it was time, then proceeded to shove her hands in my ladybits while making a strange “this is effort” kind of face - I asked “what are you doing?!” and she said “I’m breaking your sack”

After this initial “wtf” moment I was wheeled down the hallway to an operating room where a doctor I had met all of like twice was there waiting. I followed her instructions for pushing but I couldn’t feel when I was supposed to push or how hard to push. I struggled with it for several hours until I thought my brains would explode and I would stroke out or have an aneurism. Sometime around 9am she said I really needed to push my baby out because he was in fetal distress - since he was so early, my bones didn’t separate and his big head got stuck. Everyone was in panic mode and there were about 6 doctors standing to the side waiting in a separate room to receive him. She made a motion and suddenly blood literally sprayed out across her, her face, my husbands body, face, arms.. I looked, completely freaked out and shouted, “Did you just cut me?!”

She was all like, “I had to, the baby is struggling, push him out!”

So I push and push and holy F was I exhausted but I finally pushed him out, and a doctor ran over and took him to the side room with the other doctors where they made him go from gray alien 👽 to pink baby and did his apgar tests and basically saved his life. I never heard him cry and they ran him out the door to the NICU. I still had to get the placenta out and at this point I was just like

They finally bring me to a new delivery room and it was noisy and the nurses were horrible. They were late with my pain meds every time, even after I buzzed them - I mean like hours late - and even then it was just Motrin so it was like whatever

Sometime around 3pm they stuffed me into a wheelchair and took me to the NICU where I got to FINALLY meet my son.

He was 4 pounds 6 ounces and 17 inches long born 32 weeks. He stayed in the NICU for 26 days.

He’s 6 years old now and I find myself 20 weeks pregnant again, at the age of 40. This time, I will be having a cesarean birth because holy hell