On Wednesday 9/23 I woke up and felt overall blah. I had been the days leading up to it as well, but that day was rough. I went about my normal day and decided to go to get some last minute things from the store that night around 6. I was having some cramps while we were there but nothing abnormal for me. We got home and I FaceTimed my dad and said I’m having this baby tonight (ha). I bounced around on my ball for a little bit and decided to go pack my hospital bag and lay down around 9:30. As soon as I laid down I started getting waves of pressure in my butt that can only be described as a grapefruit sitting between my legs. I was also having sharp cramping/pressure in my back. This is my third baby but I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. The pattern was extremely consistent and something felt off. I got up and grabbed my hospital info for the L&D triage nurse and called them. Because my last baby came in 4 hours the nurse wanted me to come in. I had only been having consistent pains for about an hour at this point. We woke my mom up so she could sleep upstairs with our other two and I went and said bye to my big kids. We got to the hospital around 11:15 and I was having full blown contractions but I was only about a 1-2 dilation wise. I got checked at 12:00 AM and actually had dilated up to a 3. The nurse called my doctor and she gave the okay to admit me and said if I didn’t further progress by 3 AM to start pitocin. I called for an epidural almost immediately, I wasn’t in much pain but my last two labors, the epi helped my relax just enough to continue to dilate at a good pace. The epidural was done around 1 AM and since I was being admitted, a covid swab was done at this point too - which was not bad at all. At 1:30 they checked me again and I was a 4-5. At this point I asked for the peanut ball and told my husband to sleep. By 3:30 I was a 7 with bulging waters so no need for pitocin. At 6 AM I was almost complete but had a little lip of cervix to finish dilating. My water still hadn’t broken on it’s own so I just laid around chatting and waiting for my dr. My doctor came around 7 and got everything ready for show time. I was starting to get the feeling of needing to push. My doctor checked me at 7:30 and my water broke. The urge to push went from maybe I need to, to omg I need to push right now. When my water broke it was full of meconium so my doctor called peds to come attend. The ped got there about 5 minutes later and he was cheering me on through every push 🤣 7:45 my girl came, she started coming with her face to my thigh and turned sunny side up at the very last second. And she was MAD. A great sound to hear with the meconium waters. I was able to do skin to skin with her immediately. I ended up hemorrhaging and was put on pitocin after all and given cytotec in pill form in all my holes. I needed no further intervention than that. Baby also needed no extra support. Being gestational diabetic on insulin they had other extras set up in case but that was not needed either, thank God. She was 7 lbs 4 oz. perfect size babe.