I was 36 weeks pregnant. I was up late, not sleepy. Around 1:30 I stood up to go to the kitchen, and leaked a bunch of liquid. I wasn't sure if this was just a new humiliating stage of pregnancy, when I just start randomly peeing myself, or if my water just broke. I had no contractions at this point. I woke up my husband, and we decided to go to the hospital to get checked out. Since I was only 36 weeks, I had just started getting together my hospital bag, so I wanted to get together some stuff, take a shower, eat some food, just in case.

On the way to the hospital I started to feel some slight cramps, so I realized I might actually be in labor. When I arrived, they quickly confirmed I was in labor. For about 4 hours I chatted with my husband and got progressively stronger labor pains. I was planning and epidural, but wanted to wait a bit to give the contractions a chance to strengthen. Around 4:30 I was feeling a lot of pain during contractions, so I requested the epidural. Around 5:30 it was administered with no complications, and I immediately started to feel much better. At this time my doctor ordered Pitocin, because my water broken so early, and it was my first baby, so she was concerned it would take me too long to give birth, increasing the risk of infection. Once I was given the Pitocin, it went really fast.
Around 9:30 am, I told the nurse I felt a lot of pressure and had a strong urge to push. She did not think I could be ready, but when she checked I was fully dialated. My doctor had not come to the hospital at this point, thinking I would not be ready until that afternoon or later. So I literally clenched myself tight and waited until she arrive. Once she got there things went fast. I could not feel the contractions because of the epidural, so she told me when to push and I pushed hard. I gave birth after 3 hard pushes. I pushed for about 20 minutes total. At some point I got a wicked episiotomy. My son was born at 10:21 am, 8 1/2 lbs. I then birthed the placenta, actually I pushed and the doctor reached in and pulled it out. While my son was getting cleaned up and weighed, I was stitched up. Then they handed him to me, and I held him and my husband held him. I was going to start nursing, but they noticed he was having labored breathing. Since he was 4 weeks early, they were concerned, and he went to the NICU. He was there for a week, first to wait for his lungs to clear, and then because he was very jaundiced. I stayed in the hospital for 2 days, started pumping right away, and was lucky to produce a lot of milk very quickly. He started out on oxygen and intravenous nutrition. Next day no oxygen, next day breast milk in a bottle. That day I was discharged, and it was very hard to leave him at the hospital. Two days later he was ready to feed at the breast, and I got to move back to the hospital to nurse him. Thank goodness that despite his time in the NICU, and the bottles, and the pacifiers, and the 5 days delay until time on the boob, he took to it like a champ. A week after he was born, we went home.

We will not have another baby; I'm not sure if I would do anything differently if we did. I've been a fairly granola mom since the get go, but I was really happy for the epidural and the hospital delivery. I am grateful that I got to skip that last 4 weeks, and grateful he was a healthy and fine. He was 10.5 lbs at his one month appt on his due date, so I'm glad he came early! As an aside, while I was upstairs giving birth, my childbirth class was going on in the basement. And I really wanted a doula, but I had him before I could hire one. Drat.