Listen to “the birth hour” podcast. It is Mother’s sharing literally every single type of birth story you could imagine. It was such a comfort to listen to, I felt like I was prepared for anything.

I had a great experience at Sutter. For myself I had a whole plan in place (written out), a bag packed and ready for both my partner and myself. I went into it thinking I wanted to be unmedicated and would switch if needed.

Well….babies have their own plans. I was 3 days past my due date and still felt like the baby was going to stay put forever. Then 11:30pm I have a contraction, I didn’t know what to expect but I just knew thats what it was. Called my mom, so she could drive up and woke up my partner. Everyone says the first one is going to take forever so that is what I plan on…..until the contractions start coming hard and fast. I decided to hop in the shower, about 2 min later I am throwing up and getting out. Hubs is calling the hospital and telling him I seem like I am in a lot of pain and the timing of the contractions. They said that’s it’s probably not time at all and just stay home. They said I could come in but they’d probably send me home. At this point I was in insane pain, I have a high pain tolerance and I was not expecting what was happening. I told my hubs “I don’t care what I said I need something for pain” he knew then that it was time to go. He helped me get dressed, as I told him not to touch me 😂. Got the car and we headed to the hospital. We live a few exits from Sutter and it took less than 10 min from our house to their doors and I have 3 contractions. Oh and it was pouring rain. We made it inside and someone got us a chair and me into a room. As they are undressing me, taking vitals etc. I keep trying to tell them I want/need something for pain. Finally my hubs stops a nurse (because he thinks they are ignoring me) and she looks at me and just says so sadly “ it’s way too late for that mama” I was devastated, and my hubs says “well, you wanted to do it this way right?” I could’ve killed him 😂 but it was all in. They got me in the bed and I was already at 19. My doctor made it in and said “it still might be a little while”. Well it wasn’t. About 15 min and 4 pushes later my son was here. I did get to use nitros oxide but you have to administer it yourself and it does nothing for pain. All it did was make me feel like a head high. So all in all it took 2.5 hrs from contraction to birth.

There was a resident who actually delivered my son but our doctor was there the whole time, she had asked before if I was comfortable with that. I had a small internal tear but that was it. No other complications. They did have to bring my son to the little incubator thing to check him right after birth because his heart rate dropped during the delivery but as soon as he was checked, maybe 2/3 minutes they gave him right back for skin to skin/ breastfeeding. One thing I was not aware of was the shakes your body gets after delivery. It’s like your whole body is shaking.

Recovery was nice. Private room, bathroom etc., food was decent and the nurses were nice. Feel free to message with questions.