I wanted to share Amelia’s birth story with you all! One, because if I don’t write it down now I know I will forget it and two, hopefully it will give new moms an idea of what to expect. **Side note it’s kinda lengthy
So rewinding back to 40 weeks pregnant me. My mom came to visit hoping that Amelia would be born close to her birth day on 10/22 (spoiler alert: she was). My husband was on no fly, thank you Air Force for giving him two weeks prior to be home after a regular 7-4:30 day at work. I was getting so impatient! I was trying everything to spur on labor the raspberry leaf tea, walking, bouncing, praying..but as Mom’s know, there really is no way of knowing exactly when baby will make their arrival.
October 22, 2017
Amelia’s due date of 10/18 had come and gone. Ian and I got up and had a big Birthday breakfast for my Mom hoping that her and Amelia would be Birthday twins! At this point, I was having contractions or Braxton Hicks, all over the place like 4 min apart and then 20 min apart. I remember sitting at our kitchen island with the contraction counting app just waiting. We jokingly kept calling her arrival “fake news” because I had gone into L&D like 28464903 times swearing it was the real thing. Towards the middle of the day I felt like they were getting a little more consistent. So I called L&D and they said give it a few more hours and if the contractions keep coming, come on in.
Here is the kicker, at a military hospital labor and delivery, you have to be a whopping 6 cm dilated before they will admit you. Yes, you read that right 6 cm. After I got off the phone with L&D I felt like okay this is it, I have my bags, I have my delivery playlist, I have my breathing techniques, I’m ready. Let’s do this! Come to find I was only 3 cm. I looked at the doc and was like “No, you need to check again..” They gave us the option to stay the night and walk the hospital (to help me dilate) or go home and wait. We chose to stay and walk it out. I was in so much pain and I swear Ian was my rock he popped open some Red Bull and was ready for a long night. I have never become SO familiar with the layout of a hospital until that night when we walked the hospital for four hours.
October 23, 2017
The next morning they checked me again…4 cm. The doc on call sent us home to wait. Looking back this was actually great because Ian was able to get a few hours of sleep, we ate, I was able to rest. My contractions were coming sporadically and then they just stopped for a whole hour and a half so I took a nap. We just figured I would have to be induced that following Monday. Then Lord help me, the storm hit, I woke up from my nap around 5pm and Ian and I were gonna try to go on yet another walk. I went upstairs to get shoes and I had the worst contraction yet. Ian ran upstairs and helped count in between and then I had another one, they were about 4 min apart. My mom came in and goes “We need to go”.
Looking back, it’s so funny because I totally thought it would be like the movies, like me walking in the store and “oh look my water broke better get on over to the hospital” *big smile on face* No. It happens so fast it’s like BAM wave of excruciating pain and the rest is a blur. The part that was like the movies though was Ian weaving in and out of traffic, me screaming in pain, my mom holding on to dear life in the back seat.
We had to park in the ER entrance and Ian ran in to get a wheelchair to wheel me in. We got into ER, I’m screaming in pain and Ian tells the lady behind the desk. “We called ahead, my wife’s having a baby” The lady gets up walks, slow as molasses over to the nurse to verify and I may have screamed some obscenities (not one of my prouder moments). FINALLY we got up to L&D. 7cm
So I don’t know about y’all but I had everything planned out how I wanted it to go. I wanted 100% natural birth, no meds, no nothing. But something happens to you when you are in that much pain for so long, 48 hours to be exact, that you feel like you’re going to die and you just say “Give me the epidural!” I wish I could have stuck it through without the epidural but I wouldn’t change it because it was the way God intended. I will tell you that after they got that epidural going, mannn did it feel good. Ian says I was a new person. We just waited, I took another nap, we watched Fever Pitch, all while my body was dilating to the size of a grapefruit! We had just put in the Dodgeball DVD when I started feeling things again, like before. I called for the anesthesiologist, telling him I didn’t think the epidural was working but he assured me it was. Apparently epidurals are different for everyone and I could definitely feel a lot towards the end. The doc came in a broke my water with this thing that looks like a kabob skewer. All I remember after that is watching the Dodgeball Menu play on a continuous loop, while Ian held one leg and the nurse held the other and I pushed as hard as I possibly could. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the movie Dodgeball the same again.
October 24, 2017
It was around 2am and I had been pushing for about 20 min and the anesthesiologist gave me some medicine to help me rest in between contractions because I was exhausted. Finally at 2:49 Amelia Grace made her debut! 7lbs 1oz she was perfect! So after the baby comes out so many things are going on, you have nurses everywhere, someone rubbing your stomach (which is exactly what you want after you shoved a human out of you), people stitching you up. It’s chaos. But after all of that you get to hold your little baby and it’s the sweetest thing you can ever imagine and all the crazy was worth it! 
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