My birth story

My baby boy is 9 weeks and I’m just now kinda getting around to posting his birth story. I’m 26, and this was my first pregnancy. I was 37+3 and I was headed to my weekly appointment. My due date was May 19th, and everything in my pregnancy was going good. I had only ever gotten good reports from the doctor. My blood pressure was always good, all my bloodwork and every ultrasound came back positive with nothing but good news. Never had gestational diabetes or anything and baby was doing well at every appointment. It was like a dream. I was still working a normal 8-10hr shift at my job and by the time I hit about 34/35 weeks, my feet started swelling uncontrollably. I had gained over 50lbs from the pregnancy, so needless to say that I was incredibly uncomfortable everyday. My OB saw my swelling and talked to me about pre-eclampsia, the symptoms and why we wanted to avoid it. Other than being uncomfortable, I felt fine. And I never had any symptoms of preeclampsia other than the swelling. So she sent me home every time and said that we would just monitor it. So now I’m 37+3 and headed back for another appointment. My feet were still really swollen and I just had my baby shower a few days before, so I was ready to get home and just relax. I had so much to finish packing and getting ready for the baby’s room. I pee in a cup, have my blood pressure checked, then I could go home and go on with my day. But that’s not how things ended up going. I went in, had my blood pressure checked, and the nurse told me it was more elevated than normal. I felt genuinely fine, so I was pretty surprised. She checked it again on my other arm and still said it was pretty high. So we waited for my OB to come in and look at me before she tried to check it again. About fifteen minutes later, my OB comes in and is again worried about my swelling. She checks my blood pressure again we see it’s actually went up since fifteen minutes ago. So my OB says she wants to go ahead and send me to hospital. Let them check me out and rule out preeclampsia. Obviously not the news I wanted to hear, and I didn’t even have my hospital bag with me, but I ended up going to the hospital anyway. The nurses there hooked me up to the machine to monitor me and the baby’s heart rate. And I sat there for about an hour while nurses took more blood work from me and kept checking my blood pressure. Baby was doing good the whole time, the issue was my blood pressure. Even through all of this, it kept going up even more. So the doctor comes in and says that they wanna keep me, induce me, and go ahead and deliver the baby before my condition worsens. So I’m not prepared for this at all, but it’s fine. As long as my baby is safe, it’s fine. I never made a birth plan because how I delivered my baby wasn’t important as long as he made it out safe. So they take to a room, and they go ahead and start me on pill, (I forgot the name of it), to soften my cervix. I’m messaging my partner what’s going on and what all I need him to bring from home. He’s still at work, so it’s gonna be a long wait. I’m in this huge hospital alone, and the only thing I want is just for someone to be with me. I try to watch tv and nap in the meantime to get my mind off how alone I am. The nurse comes back and sees I’m not really progressing well. I’m only a cm dilated so she gives me another pill. And we wait some more. Still not much progress had been made, so they switch things up and start me on pitocin through an IV. My partner has finally arrived by now with my bags and everything, and it’s about six or seven that evening. Baby’s still doing good, the nurses have my belly wrapped up with some sort of monitor to keep a close eye on him, my blood pressure is still being monitored, I’m having my cervix checked pretty regularly, so it’s just a waiting game. It’s now about ten o clock at night and the nurses says they wanna just break my water for me, considering I’m not progressing. We need to go ahead and get the baby out of me and in a safer environment to prevent eclampsia, and then they ask me if I wanna go ahead and get the epidural as soon as they break my water. I’m scared, overwhelmed and definitely not ready to deal with any of this at this point. I’m crying and the nurses are nice enough to give me some time t think. I hate needles and getting stuck in my arm, I know I’m gonna hate a needle in my back and I’ve convinced myself it’s gonna hurt way too much. So after much tears I call the nurses to go ahead and induce me.. and I hated every moment of it. One nurse had this huge crochet needle with a hook on it, and I was ready to run away. But I had to be strong for the baby. So up my cervix went the crochet hook and the nurses arm while I’m clutching both sides of the bed. ‘Never doing this again’ is all I kept telling myself. My water ‘sack’ didn’t seem to wanna break, so the nurse had to use a little maneuvering and more force to get the hook inserted to tear a hole. Soon after, I felt the huge gush of water, I still didn’t want the epidural so the nurses left me alone for a bit to see how o would progress now. Shortly after they left, I felt the contractions. And they hit strong and fast. They were a minute apart and hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. I endured and held out because I couldn’t stand another needle being stuck into me during this pregnancy. I felt ready to die. The pains were intense and I was feeling so underprepared for this. The nurses came back periodically to check on me and me and the baby. He was still doing fine, but I still wasn’t making much progress. Despite the amount of pain I was in, I had only dilated to four centimeters in those few hours. So now I’m feeling nauseous, overwhelmed, scared and really incapable of doing this. I’m thinking hard about epidural. It’s now 3am and I just wanna sleep, but can’t. These pains are getting more intense, so i finally decided to get the epidural. Thirty minutes later, I’m regretting it. It was only one needle, but it hurt so much. I almost passed out. That was the worst needle stick ever. Told myself o DEFINITELY will never do this to myself again. The epidural takes effect and I finally am able to sleep. I don’t wake back up until around seven, and I’m numb from the waist down. I feel like my legs have doubled if not tripled in size, and I can’t move either one no matter how hard I try. I’m definitely scared now. I’ve only been able to have ice and water since they’ve inserted my IV, but I don’t care about food. I’m exhausted. I feel cold. And I can’t stop shaking. The nurse checked me again and I’m now at nine centimeters. So the nurses say I’ll be able to push soon, and go ahead and deliver my baby. You think that would put me at ease, but it doesn’t. I feel like I’m gonna be stuck on this bed forever. I’m bored, tired of laying in bed waiting. Growing restless. The nurses come back later and this time there’s three of them at the bottom of my bed and one in corner waiting with the lamp bed for my baby. Pushing out a huge baby head is harder than it looks on tv. It felt like a whole workout on its own. His head was definitely the hardest thing to push out. Halfway through, i was out of breath and my throat was dry from all the deep breathing. At 1:24pm, my baby boy was born weighing five pounds and four ounces. I did five minutes of skin to skin, because he was cold and wouldn’t warm up. So the nurse took his heated bed and him to the NICU. I had a first degree tear, but didn’t need any stitches, so I was happy for that. He’s now 9weeks, and it feels like time is going by so fast.