I went into early labor on Thursday morning, 4/14. I was having regular contractions every 3 minutes, but they weren't very strong or painful, and I was only 1cm dilated. They continued into Friday, so I stayed at home and tried to get some sleep every now and then. Starting around 9pm, the contractions got stronger and I was definitely noticing them. By 11pm they were getting pretty uncomfortable, and they were still happening every 3 minutes, so I didn't get any sleep.
At 5am on Saturday morning, 4/16, Andy convinced me that we should head to the hospital. We were ready to go by 6am, but I knew change of shift was at 7am, so I wanted to wait until after that. We got to the hospital at 7:05 and I was admitted immediately since I was 7cm dilated already! My contractions seemed much more painful once I realized how far along I was. They asked if I wanted an epidural and I said yes, so they started an IV and drew some blood to check my platelet count. The anesthesiologist got there around 9am and was about to prep for the procedure when Andy asked if my platelets were okay. The anesthesiologist stopped and went to check on that. I got so mad at Andy! About 30 minutes later the anesthesiologist came back and said my platelet count was good - 124K - and administered the epidural. After 5 minutes, I felt no more pain. I was really thankful that I was able to get the epidural.
Around 10am, the on-call OB came in and wanted to break my water, but about 10 minutes later my water broke naturally. At noon, I was 9cm dilated and the OB gave me some pitocin to speed things along. Around 1:30pm I was finally 10cm and ready to start pushing. For the first hour I couldn't really feel anything, but then by the second hour, the epidural started wearing off, and I could feel the contractions again, but the OB said that was good so I would know when to push. By 3pm, the baby started to crown. They kept asking if I wanted to feel or see the head, and I was like, no!! By 3:30, I was exhausted and could barely push anymore. The OB decided to just reach in and pull the baby out, and I was very thankful that she did! A minute later, at 3:44pm, Adelyn was on my chest. It was a pretty surreal experience.
