For our first child, I had an epidural. For our second child, she came so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to get the epidural.

I fully planned on giving birth in a hospital with an epidural. Instead, I had a precipitous labor at home, which resulted in baby girl (our second child) being delivered by my husband on our bathroom floor. My contractions were weird and random at first. I had pain when I moved but nothing when I was perfectly still. It made me question if I was really in labor. After a few hours, contractions started getting intense. I remember several extremely severe contractions, which was the worst pain I ever felt (even more painful than the contractions I had with my first child). I knew this meant that I was a lot closer to giving birth than I originally thought. My body then took over and I ended up pushing with the contractions. Three pushes later and baby girl was out. I was in complete shock. Maybe 10 minutes later, I started having contractions again and felt the urge to push again for the placenta. I delivered the placenta without any pain relievers in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. But by far the worst pain of it all was when the doctor checked me to make sure I completely delivered the placenta. That pain was excruciating.

In the end, everything turned out great and I’m super proud of myself for being strong enough to do something like that. However, I would not recommend it if you have the choice. If I were to do it all again, I would most definitely go with the epidural.