TL:DR - several days prodromal labor but only 12 hours of active labor - hospital birth with epi, 8lb sunny side up baby with 3rd degree tear - Pics at the end!

I started having prodromal labor on Sunday, November 17th. I had contractions pretty consistently all day and lost my mucous plug on Monday, November 18th. It came out in two HUGE globs of snot like mucous. Pretty gross, lol. Contractions stopped until Wednesday around 1pm. They came back and were pretty consistent all day and then all day Thursday, November 21st. I ended up going into L&D on Thursday morning because I thought my water had broken (I was leaking all over). Turns out it was just tons of mucous/show. I spent 7 hours at L&D laboring in the tub and walking the halls but I didn't make any progress (I had gotten to 3cm and was stuck there). They gave me a shot of morphine and sent me home so that I could spent the night there and labor in peace with my family.

Friday morning, November 22nd I woke up at 4am with very painful contractions. So painful I was moaning through them while laying in bed. After 3 back to back I got up and decided to take a shower. I figured if it was still false labor the shower would stop them. It didn't! I had 4 contractions in the shower. I went downstairs to labor on my exercise ball (that DF literally just bought for me the night before after I spent all day at L&D). I asked him to make me eggs too, which he did (even my favorite kind of eggs, which was very sweet). I barely got through 3 bites of them between contractions and I realized "shit ok, this is real". Painful, consistent, lasting a minute. Totally different from any contractions I had up to that point.

We headed to the hospital and got there around 7am. Contractions in the car were awful. Got there and I had two people stop me on the way to L&D asking if I needed a wheelchair. I declined and made it to the check in counter. They quickly got me back, checked me and YAY I was 5cm! They admitted me right away. The time from 7am to when I got my epidural at 10am was horrible. OMG. I could never give birth naturally lol. I knew I wanted an epidural as soon as they told me I was 5cm. By the time they got it in I was 6cm and my bag of waters was bulging. I labored after the epi was in for right at 2 hours when my water broke and I was at 7-8cm. Contractions got a LOT stronger after that so they upped my epi. They checked me again an hour and 15 minutes later (1:15pm at this point) and I had just a lip of cervix (from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock) left and I was 100% effaced. Just kept laboring and by 4pm I was 10cm and 100%. He was still at a -1/0 station so we just hung out and waited to see if he would move down. He didn't after 2 hours of waiting so they started a little pitocin to see if that would work. I was only on the pit for half an hour or so when they had me go ahead and start practice pushes to see if he would move down. He did a little and they decided OK, GO TIME.

Doctor came in and originally was going to try and turn him if we couldn't get him to come down by pushing. After two practice tries he already had come down to a 0/+1 station so he said screw the ultrasound and turning, let's get him out of there. I started pushing for real at 5pm and at 5:25pm Nathaniel Alexander Lee was born totally sunny side up weighing 8lbs 2oz and 20 inches long. We delayed cutting the cord about 60 seconds and DF cut the cord. He looked great so he was placed right on my chest for skin to skin for about an hour before we weighed/measured him.

I have a 3rd degree tear (hard not to when baby is sunny side up) and some other smaller tears. I don't care, he's worth all the pain :) He latched great but has been very sleepy after the initial craziness after he was born. I love him to pieces and I am so happy that our family is complete :)