Around 36w3d pregnant with my second, I developed an intense itching, mostly in my hands and feet but a little bit all over my body. Couldn’t sleep through the itch, it got worse at night, and I started googling as you do 😂

Dr Google told me I probably had cholestasis of pregnancy, so I of course started freaking out a little bit and call my midwife to ask about blood tests and my worries. She asked me to do a walk-in at my family doctor that day since it would be the absolute fastest route to get results since it was a Thursday. I got in urgently at their clinic, and the next day (Friday morning) my midwife called me to come in for a non-stress test as the liver numbers usually indicating cholestasis were definitely elevated so they wanted to check on baby. I called my mom to come for the weekend to watch our toddler because she warned me there may be a lot of in and out with the hospital and tests and my kiddo wouldn’t be allowed inside.

We got to the hospital the next morning for testing at 10am, got repeat blood tests and an ultrasound, and sat in triage for HOURS. It was quite a day for babies, over a dozen came in just while I was waiting for the doctor to look at my labs so I sat in the triage bed on monitoring until 3pm. The OB on call came in and told me that my numbers had more than doubled (266 on Thursday, over 500 on Saturday) so they wanted to induce me as soon as possible as I was 36+6 and they felt he was at a safe enough point to come. We got admitted and got into a room by 3:30pm, and I was at 2cm so they planned to start me on pitocin and break my water once my body started a pattern of contractions.

They started my pitocin drip at 7:30pm, and at 12:15am sunday they came and broke my water. I got my epidural at about 1:30am since the contractions started getting fast and furious at that point, every 2-3 minutes with tons of pressure, and they checked me about an hour after getting it and I was still only 3cm but thinning out a bit and baby was a bit lower. My epidural wasn’t making me fully numb, which was great, but I still felt all the pressure and pain in my cervix during a contraction but my abdomen was still numbed. My nurse came in at about 3:45am to adjust my monitors because they weren’t picking up my contractions well and baby was having a few decels during contractions so they turned off my pitocin and she switched my positions a few times to try and make baby happier. I was still at only about 3cm at that point (about 4:30am) so we started worrying a bit that I wasn’t going to make it all the way to 10cm… turns out that was for nothing 😂

A few minutes later I started having a lot of pressure, so my nurse checked me again and said she thought I might be at 7cm, but wanted to ask the doctor to check to be sure. He came in straight after finishing a c-section, and all of a sudden I felt my body pushing and realized I would feel everything. Baby was born at 5:33am at 37wks exactly and he’s perfect!!