She’s here! My sweet girl was born late last night after only 3 hours of contractions at 40 weeks, 4 days.

At 11am, I had my last doctor’s appointment. I was 3.5cm and I had my membranes stripped. We went about our day like normal. I had no contractions or anything to show for having my membranes done. We took my three year old to the zoo and walked around.

At 8pm, I started to feel a little crampy but I had so many braxton Hicks contractions this time that I seriously doubted it was labor! At 9, they had turned into actual contractions but were 7 minutes apart so I figured I had a while. My husband drove our toddler out to the grandparents house because I was worried we would have to wake him at like 2AM to take him out there.

By 10:30 I decided to get in the shower to labor a bit. I stayed there for about 10 contractions. When I got out, I realized my contractions must have gotten a lot closer together- 3-4 minutes.

At 11:15 my husband called L&D and at 11:22 we decided to head in. I would have guessed I was 5-6 cm’s at this point and I was hoping for an epidural so I could rest a little during the night 🤣🤣 Looking back, I now realize I was in transition and was having tons of pressure. We live 4 blocks from the hospital and got there pretty quickly. I had a contraction in the lobby of the ER (just walking through to get to L&D) They made me ride in a wheelchair the rest of the way and I tried to argue it! I was talking fine in between contractions and still felt like labor wasn’t that far along.

11:40 we walked into our L&D room. The nurse checked me and immediately called out for someone to stat page my doctor who was at home sleeping. She said I wasn’t getting the epidural because she couldn’t even feel the cervix. The next 13 minutes are a blur of the nurse asking me not to push and me telling her between contractions that it wasn’t a conscious decision at this point, it was happening. I was half kneeling, half sitting on the bed and it was a great position for pushing. There was some yelling on my part 😅

At 11:53 my doctor ran into the room and put on his gloves. My water still hadn’t broken but he decided to rupture the membranes to help with tearing. She was seconds away from being born en Caul, which is when the baby is born in the fully intact water sac. He ruptured them, i pushed twice, and baby was out.

She was a little shocked at the quick delivery and her apgars were not good. They stimulated her and suctioned her a handful of times. When she was about 15 minutes old, I was able to hold her and do skin to skin. She breastfed at 40 minutes old and has been absolutely perfect ever since. We are so grateful and blessed with a healthy baby! She’s 7lbs, 1oz.

My first delivery (I have a 3 year old) was the complete opposite. 12 hours in labor, pushed for 2.5 hours, had an epidural. I 10/10 recommend a 15 minute trip to L&D with no epidural, no IV, and practically no interventions. 🤣🤣 Recovery has been a breeze and pain has been so much less this time around!