It’s been two weeks since my baby was born, I figured it was time I posted my birth story.

On Wednesday, August 20, I went in for my 38 week appointment and was a good 3, almost 4 centimeters dilated. Thursday night I started getting contractions. They ranged in frequency anywhere from 5-20 minutes apart, but never stayed regular. The next day, they continued all day long. My family and friends were pressuring me to go get checked out. I kept hearing stories of women getting to the hospital and being told they were 7, 8, 9 centimeters and it freaked me out. I was definitely feeling contractions, but they weren’t horribly painful at all. Everyone says you should wait until they are too hard to talk through or are 5 minutes apart for an hour. This was not the case for me.

I was getting stressed that I would go into labor in the middle of the night and we would have to worry about Jax and what to do with him. I finally decided on Friday evening, August 22, that we should go to the hospital and see what was happening. It was a gut feeling. So, we collected our bags, brought Jax to my parents’ house and off we went. The outpatient entrance was empty and we were sent right up to triage. I was hooked up to the monitors and given an internal exam. I was 6 centimeters!!!! Woah - did not expect that as I was still not in any pain. My contractions were so irregular and I was not making progress. I was so afraid they were going to send me home. Turns out that I WISH they would have sent me home. The night sucked!

After a biophysical ultrasound, which my son almost failed, and several hours of being monitored and probed, they decided to admit me. They wanted to see how I’d progress over night. I asked if I could walk around and try to get things going, but I was hooked up to the monitors and an IV so they didn’t want me to move. At 4:30 a.m. I had finally had enough and basically demanded that they unleash me and let me WALK!!! DH and I walked around the halls. It did nothing.

At 7 a.m., I was still 6 cm and my contractions were still irregular and not painful. I was absolutely starving having not eaten since lunch the day before, I had a horrendous headache and was very very cranky. I wanted to get the show on the road already.  Finally at about 7:30 a.m., they administered pitocen. Even though I was not in pain yet, I knew that the pitocen would really kick things off so I asked for an epidural.

It was really strange to not feel any pain. My legs were extremely numb and heavy from the epi and it was very uncomfortable, but I think it was better than being in pain. It takes about an hour for the pit to start working and once it did, well, things moved QUICKLY. My water broke and I went from 6-10 centimeters in about 20 minutes. At this point, I could feel my contractions on my left side. They were extremely painful, but didn’t last very long so I was ok. I couldn’t believe how fast everything was happening. The doctor came in and I literally pushed through 3 or 4 contractions and my precious new son, Jett Ryan, was born at 10:40 a.m on Saturday, August 23!!! He weighed 7 lb 1 oz and was 20.4 inches long.