My Labor & Delivery Story: She’s Here!

She’s finally here, and I can’t believe it. I’m finally a mom to a real-life baby. I’ve waited so long for this, and I’m so grateful.

Since she arrived, I feel like I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but right now she’s asleep in a carrier on my chest, so I’ve got a few minutes to sit down and work. So in this time, I wanted to tell my birth story before I forget any details.

How are we getting to the hospital?

On Sunday night, my husband and I got in the car to go pick up a Target order of baby supplies, only to discover our tire was completely flat, and our car didn’t have a spare. So we were stuck at home instead. I made an appointment to have a mobile car service company come out the next day.

I was so paranoid I was going to go into labor that night, and we would have no car to get to the hospital other than calling 911. Monday afternoon, I got a notification from the car service company that they canceled my appointment. I immediately made another appointment. They came out later that evening and said they couldn’t fix the wheel because our car had wheel locks, and the dealer hadn’t included the wheel lock key when we bought our car. So, once again, we didn’t have a car. I had my regular weekly doctor’s appointment the next morning, so my husband’s sister kindly offered to drive me. I ended up finding wheel lock keys that would work for our car and scheduled another service appointment for after my doctor’s appointment.

Later that night, my husband and I were sitting in the living room. I was sitting on my yoga ball because, in the last few weeks of pregnancy, it was the only place I could get comfortable. I said to my husband, “I keep having this intrusive thought that tomorrow, after my doctor's appointment, they are going to just send me up to labor and delivery to be induced, but I’m sure that won’t happen.”

My Weekly Doctors Appointment

The next morning, at my appointment, my doctor did a cervical check and an NST. I was 1cm dilated and 60% effaced, which I had been for three weeks at that point. Then my sweet little bean ended up failing her NST due to having a prolonged decel; my doctor said that he felt it was best to just go upstairs to labor and delivery and be induced right now. I wasn’t prepared for this, actually. I thought it was just an intrusive thought I kept having. I didn’t go right upstairs to labor and delivery to be induced. I ran out and got back in the car with my husband and his sister. I had to go home to finish my hospital bag. Then I ate breakfast (McDonald’s, the choice of champions, lol), and my sister-in-law kindly drove us right back to the hospital.

But we had a small issue: our car with the car seat for the baby still had a flat tire. Kindly my sister-in-law was able to be there when the mobile repair company came out again, and they were finally able to fix the tire.

My Induction

Meanwhile, I was getting checked into the hospital. I was admitted at 12 pm. They hooked me up to continuous monitoring, a blood pressure cuff that checked my BP every 15 minutes, and started trying to get an IV for bloodwork and later fluids and Pitocin. The first IV was immediately blown out (ouch), and the nurse struggled to get another one in. She finally did, thankfully, and at 1:45 pm, they started me on Misoprostol 50 MCG, taken in my cheek, and basically, immediately, I started getting contractions every 2-4 minutes.

I got up and started unpacking my room. They told me since this was my first baby, I might be in labor for more than 48 hours before she got here.

Before I got back in bed after settling in, I decided to move the TV remote so I could have more slack. Little did I know that unplugging the remote sends an emergency alert to the nurse's station. And the entire floor of nurses ran into my room. I was so embarrassed. It was probably around 5 PM at this point, and right after telling my husband that I was starting to get hungry (I wasn’t allowed anything but water and ice chips), they delivered him his support person dinner. I was a little jealous. I mean, hospital food isn’t great, but I certainly could have gone for a snack.

We settled in for the night and started watching HGTV because it was one of the only stations on the TV. The nurse came in and told me to “get some sleep,” which felt impossible because I was getting closer to meeting my baby. How was I supposed to sleep?

In addition to the normal nerves and my worsening contractions keeping me up, my blood pressure started getting low, so every time my cuff checked my pressure, an alarm would sound until someone muted it or if my blood pressure went up.

Around 12 AM, I finally dozed off. Then, what felt like 5 minutes later, around 12:30 AM, I felt the worst pain I had ever felt and then a huge gush. I immediately started shaking violently. Suddenly, my contractions were unbearable. I called my nurse and said I thought my water broke and that I would like an epidural if possible. She said she would check me and then call the anesthesiologist.

When she checked me, she said I was 3 cm and 90% effaced.

After My Water Broke

The anesthesiologist came in about 45 minutes later. They were some of the worst minutes of my life. Each contraction was debilitating. I had done a bit of research on pain management techniques, but when push came to shove, the only way I could get through each one was by humming in pain and singing Christmas songs in my head. One of the main Christmas songs that got me through is “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” That definitely wasn’t a technique I learned in any of my research, lol. Due to my intense shaking, the doctor was having a hard time placing my epidural, but after inserting the catheter twice, he said that he thought he had got it.

After waiting an hour and pressing the button for more medication every time it was available to me with increasing pain and no relief, my nurse came back in to silence a blood pressure alert. She noticed I was still clenched to the side of the bed in intense pain. She said she would call the anesthesiologist back to replace my epidural. By this time, it was almost 3 AM.

A little while later, he came back and placed another epidural. This one worked, and almost immediately after, I felt like I could run a marathon. I felt so much relief. I finally started feeling like I could actually do this.

Shortly after, I started feeling pressure and notified my nurse, but she refused to check me, stating that if it were time to push, it would be “intense pressure” and that I likely hadn’t progressed much, and the nurse on the next shift would check me. I wasn’t in that much pain, so I didn’t protest, but I’m convinced I got to a 10-way before I was checked again.

I did ask if she would be willing to sneak me some juice or something because I was starving. She brought me apple juice, and I could have kissed her on the face. It tasted like pure heaven.

After Shift Change

At 7:15 AM, my current nurse and new nurse came in for a shift change. Around 45 minutes later, my new nurse came in to say my doctor would be in shortly to place an internal monitor for my contractions because my blood pressure was going up, and the baby's heart rate was starting to be affected by my contractions.

A few minutes after 8, my doctor came in to place the internal monitor and told the nurse, “She doesn’t need this monitor; she’s fully dilated and ready to push.”

I was shocked, nervous, and so excited. My doctor left and said he would be back shortly to deliver the baby. The nurse got the room ready for pushing, and we started pushing.

Go Time

Immediately, I had trouble holding my breath to push. The nurse would count to 10, but I could only hold my breath to 7-8 before I needed to breathe again. In addition, when I would push, my heart rate would go way up, and the babies would go down. A few other nurses came in to help me push. After a few minutes of pushing, they decided to start me on oxygen to see if that helped. It didn’t help the baby's heart rate, but it did help me and my ability to push.

They kept having me change positions to push, trying to find a position that worked better because I was bleeding heavily. I was thankful that I still had so much mobility after my epidural. My main nurse started talking about using a vacuum to assist delivery because I was bleeding so heavily.

Another issue we were having was that the baby girl had so much hair they couldn’t tell what position she was in, so they didn’t know if they should try to help rotate her.

We finally found a position that was kind of working and called the doctor back in. After what felt like 100 hours (but was actually almost two hours), the nurses cheered me on, and I pushed my 8 lb 6 oz baby girl out at 10:08 AM.

Because she wasn’t crying right away, they took her to the warmer to stimulate her, and a few minutes later brought her back to me to do skin-to-skin.

The Aftermath

Once she was here, they quickly realized I had a significant 2nd degree, nearly third-degree tear and two tears up the sides of my vaginal walls, but not to my cervix, thankfully. The doctor spent a while stitching me up. The nurse asked if he wanted a chair, but he refused, which made me nervous. However, I didn’t really have a care in the world because I was getting to hold my baby for the first time.

That’s my labor and delivery story. It was the best and most painful day of my life, but I am so grateful that she’s here and healthy and currently asleep on my chest as I write this story.

Here’s one of our first photos together:

Up Next

Next week, I want to talk about postpartum and things I wish I had known before I gave birth.

Thanks for being a reader of my blog and supporting me through this pregnancy and postpartum. I know I have not been very present, and I am so sorry. Pregnancy anxiety and my postpartum journey have been so different than I expected and planned for, and I’m sorry that it’s come out in my work. I hope to be fully back and better than ever soon.