My Labor and Delivery story

My labor and delivery story, there will be TMI involved so if you don't want all the details don't read!

I was jolted out of a dead sleep at about 5:40am and was really confused. My legs and bed were wet and I thought I had wet the bed. I got up and there was another slight gush of liquid. Really confused now, it occurred to me that my water could of broke, but they always tell you that rarely happens so it couldn't be. I called my partner as he was on his way to work and we proceeded to have to the most random conversation ever. I basically called him and said I was confused but didn't want to tell him what I was confused about, pretty sure he was getting pretty annoyed but I didn't want to say i think my water broke only to find out i wet pants. I proceeded to walk around and no more liquid came out, so I convinced myself that i indeed just wet myself. After talking to him for about 5min i went back to bed thinking I was crazy but still googled "water breaking" It said to put on a pad and see if more fluid collects. I got out of bed to do so and another gush. At this point my bloody show started as well but I was unaware that was what it was. I was being very irrational thinking I lost all bladder control and was now dying due to blood. My partner finally decided that he was just going to head back to house and we'd go to the hospital to see what was happening.

We got to admitting  about 6:30am and told them what was happening and instead of being startled by what I said the nurse was super excited for us and said it all sounds very promising. We were taken to the labor and delivery room and checked in. I was 3cm dilated and was starting to contract about every7-10min. My doctor came in about 7:30am and started me on my group B strep antibiotics. Once those were done i was good to go home till my contractions got 5min apart or 8hrs later for my second dose of antibiotics, whichever came first.

We went home at about 9am and proceeded to finish packing my hospital bags. Contractions were pretty steadily 6-8min apart and starting to get painful. We ate lunch and walked around the living room watching TV. By about 2:00pm the contractions were 5-6min apart and getting painful. I tried having a bath and that really did not help as I did not have room to move. We continued to hang out in the living room and use movement and a hot bean bag to help ease the pain. We decided to head back to the hospital just before 3:30pm as contractions were still 5-6min apart and I was due for antibiotics at 4:00pm (turns out it they were due at 5 but oh well). I got my antibiotics at 5:00pm and after that the contractions really started coming hard and fast. It was getting really hard to concentrate and breath through them. Walking and being upright definitely helped and the worst contractions were when I was sitting or laying and one would come. Those were the worst and I just couldn't get on top of them, I pretty much white knuckled it through those.I was getting really tired at this point and having a hard time staying up right, the 3hrs of sleep for the last few weeks really caught up to me. At about 7-7:30 pm my doctor came back and checked me and I was about 6cm dilated. I asked for the epidural and after some contemplation about whether or not the hospital had enough staff for me to get one, my doctor said she'd stay with me and to get me the epidural. It took about an hour for the on call doc to come give me one and I have never been so scared in my life! I am glad I got it but boy was I nervous, I didn't know I could sweat like that!

Happy and Pain free!!

After about 25 min I had complete relief on both sides and was happily waiting for a nap. My doc checked meat around 8:30 and I was 7cm dilated. She left and was going to come back about 11:30pm. I managed to nod in and out of sleep for about 1.5hrs before my doc returned. I was almost 8-9cm when she checked just before 12:00am but I still had quite a bit of a lip in the front so it was hard to give an exact number. I was really curious what a dilating cervix felt like and my doc put a sterile glove on and let me feel. It was really neat to feel how low babies head was. It came up just after this that I hadn't peed in a really long time and that I was to numb to feel I had to go, YAY! They used a catheter and found out that I had a ridiculously full bladder (like almost a litre!) and that was why the front of my cervix was not dilating like it should. After emptying my bladder they checked me again and I had the slightest lip left. They let me a go another 20min and the lip was still there. At 1:26am they had me start pushing through the lip and sure enough it left. We were planning for my partner to catch the baby and they got him all done in sterile gown and gloves! It was pretty funny!