The birth of my daughter Olivia was a pretty good experience. After my Group-B Strep test came back positive, the OB told me I had to call him as soon as my water broke so that they could send me to the hospital and put me on intravenous antibiotics. I woke around 8:00 Saturday morning and sat down to do a crossword puzzle, and a few minutes later felt my water break. I woke up my still sleeping husband, called the OB, and we were off. I got to the hospital and was feeling pretty nervous, but soon realized my nurse would be my nephew's mother and felt much better. I took a hot bath to ease the contractions. I wasn't sure yet whether or not I wanted to have an epidural, so I went for a few hours enduring the pain. After awhile they became too much to bear, and I knew the cutoff was quickly approaching so I decided to go ahead and have the epidural. That was one of the worst parts of the day-trying to remain still during frequent contractions was hard, and I was terrified they would miss because of my squirming. I think I almost passed out. Afterwards though, the pain was almost nonexistent, though I didn't like not being able to feel my legs.

Things calmed down after that. My husband went out for awhile to get something to eat and brought back a burrito for me to eat later. After a few hours, I wasn't very dilated and not much was happening so they gave me Pitocin. This moved things along a bit. At some point the nurse realized that the umbilical cord was wrapped around Olivia's neck and each time I had a contraction she was passing out. They put me on oxygen for the rest of my labor to make sure she was okay. Around 5:00 pm I went into active labor. Pushing was easy since I couldn't feel anything, however this went on and on and on. Olivia was finally born around 8:00 pm. 12 hours of labor, 3 hours of active labor. They gave her to me right away while my husband cut the umbilical cord. I held her for a few minutes and nursed her right away. They took her to get cleaned up and my husband took lots of pictures and video. Meanwhile, I was busy getting stitched up. I had suffered from moderate tearing due to the fact that Olivia's head is gigantic. This took about 30-45 minutes. Still couldn't feel anything (yet!) but boy was that painful for several weeks.

They brought Olivia back and she nursed some more. We had no problems latching, she was a natural. We spent lots of time cuddling skin to skin (her and her daddy too) and we decided to keep her in the room overnight rather than send her to the nursery. I finally got to eat my burrito. I ended up staying up most of the night not realizing I could just put her in the bassinet, but it was worth it. My husband slept uncomfortably on the chair bed in the room and stayed up with her for awhile while I slept.

We spent the minimum amount of time in the hospital because we really just wanted to go home. All in all, while I'm sure it wasn't the least complicated birth ever, it did not stand out as being especially hard or scary at any point. The worst part was recovering from the tears. 2.5 years later I still can't sneeze without peeing.

Thanks for listening!