One of my all time favorite things to hear are other mamas birth stories. No story is ever the same as the last! I think it is so cool that even though we are all bringing beautiful babies into this world, we each have a different experience doing it. Here is mine!
Lily’s due date was set for March 22, 2014. Being a first time mom, I hung onto that date like it was set in stone. Huge mistake! At seven days past her due date I was bouncing on balls, walking tracks, and eating spicy foods. I could not understand why she was still in there! On March 30th I woke up that morning to find that I had started having some bleeding. I immediately called my OB. The only thing she told me was to “keep an eye on it”. What does that even mean?? I was worried and a little annoyed but I went another day without any other signs of labor. The next day the bleeding had gotten worse. I decided to take matters into my own hands and showed up at my OB office to make them check me. Sure enough they found that Lily had almost completely ran out of amniotic fluid and I had started having very small contractions. They immediately sent us to the hospital to get induced. We were going to have a baby!! My husband and I were half freaking out, half excited out of our minds to know that we were going to meet our little girl soon.
At the hospital I was given Pitocin and after five hours of hard contractions I decided to get an epidural (I know, I know, I’m a weenie). The epidural really was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it did help that I had my husband there holding my hand the entire time. Even though I had gotten an epidural I was so afraid to push the button that dispensed more meds because I wanted to make sure I felt the urge to push when I needed to. On top of that, all of my amniotic fluid was gone so I had what they call a “dry birth”. So when I delivered Lily I did feel a ton of the pain. Talk about pain!!
I had my mom and my husband in the room with me through the entire delivery. I was in labor for hours and I was purely exhausted but my OB was so patient with me and was determined to allow me to deliver naturally. It did take a few rounds of pushes with breaks in between before I was able to make any progress. Then, at 1:10pm on April 1, 2014 (10 days overdue I might add!) after over 24 hours of labor we gave birth to a beautiful brunette baby girl. Lily weighed in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces and was 21 inches long.
The moment Lily was born, my husband and I looked at each other and just broke down in tears…we did it!!! It was the hardest yet best day of our lives.
