Can I join you? Intro, Birth Story & PIP

Bennett is here! He made his appearance 5 weeks early (35 weeks 1 day, to be exact) and in a really crazy way. Here is my "I totally wanted pain meds, but ended up with a natural birth" story. We went from 0-60 in less than 5 hours.

It all started at about 1:30 in the morning on Sunday morning. I woke up to pee and found that I had lost my mucus plug. I was pretty shocked, but went back to bed only to toss and turn and wake up a million times throughout the night. I woke up for work around 6:30am and felt a little crampy, but nothing even remotely painful. I blamed the cramps on cleaning house the day before and pushing myself a little too hard. On the way to work I kept thinking I should call in, so I could rest up, but decided just to go in and save the vacation time. By 9:30, I was starting to feel cramps in my lower back. They weren't painful at all, just a dull ache. I called down to our Office Manager, who is a mom, and asked her what she thought and she said just to tough it out for a bit because it was probably false labor, which she was sent home 3 times for during her late pregnancy.

Well, I started timing the aches on my iPhone app and they were about 7 minutes apart and lasted 30-45 seconds a piece. A warning sign, but again, the "contractions" weren't even remotely painful and I had always been told that you can't breathe/walk/talk through real contractions.

I went downstairs to figure out lunch at 12:15pm and was about to walk out the door when I felt a small trickle. I thought I peed my pants, so I went into the bathroom and the second I pulled down my pants there was a HUGE rush of water right into the toilet. I was in shock! 

I immediately walked out and told my coworkers that I had to go to the hospital because my water broke and they all had a mini freak out. I DROVE MYSELF the 45 minutes to the hospital and my husband was there waiting with a wheel chair. As soon as we got to registration desk (which was at 1pm) , I felt my first real contraction. Pretty painful finally and a second big one followed about 3 minutes later. I was put into triage and they determined that my water had broken and that I was already 3cm dilated, 100% effaced, and -1 station. This baby was ready to come out!

They readied my room and I was getting set up when the contractions started getting more steady. When I finally got a room, I decided to step into the shower to help relieve some pain before I could get hooked up to the IV and get an epidural, which was ready to be ordered since I was already at 3cm and I could get it at 4cm. By this time it was only 2:30 and I thought I would for sure have some time to kill anyways.

I got out of the shower, into the bed, hooked up to the IV and the contractions got crazy painful. I had terrible back labor, so we figure he was anterior. I remembered the nurse at birthing class say that yoga balls can do wonders to turn babies, so I tried it out for a bit. It was the worst pain Ive ever felt. Not going to lie. The doctor came in to check me at 3:45. The look on his face was priceless... I was already 8.5 cm dilated and  I was almost ready to push. He stepped out and within 10 minutes I felt the urge to push, so the doctor came back in, they prepped the stuff and I started pushing. There was no time for any pain meds at this point. I begged for them because it was pretty painful. LOL!

I pushed for about 25 minutes and Bennett finally made an appearance at 4:18pm. DH & I cried like crazy. It is the most amazing feeling in the world the first time that you lay eyes on your baby. I was only able to hold him for a few minutes because he was struggling when taking breaths. He has been in NICU (they call in CCN here) since birth and will probably be there until Christmas. It is so hard not being able to hold him and snuggle him, but we know he is in good hands.At birth, he was 5 lbs 15 oz & 19 inches long with lots of hair, a cute little nose, adorable lips and the cutest toes you've ever seen.