They weren't kidding when they called it 'labor'.

Note: Not all labors are the same. A LOT of women have really easy labors. Some women, like me, almost die from it. My labor is in no way a reflection of how your labor will go.


   As you could probably tell from my little note, my labor wasn't the best. That's a lie, my labor was fine, it was the events immediately following the birth of my daughter that sucked. I was scheduled for induction May 15, 2013 at 9:30pm, that morning I got up, got dressed and prepared to enjoy my last day just me and my husband. We went to McDonald's for lunch because I had planned to diet following the birth of my daughter, and we went and saw my mom at work. At around 4ish we decided to go home and nap before we went into the hospital. I got into bed at about five and I couldn't fall asleep. I spent about an hour and a half just staring at the ceiling. I was too excited, I should have known there was no way in hell that I was going to sleep anytime soon. At 6:30 I had the strange feeling to look at my phone, turns out the hospital was calling. I answered the phone and the nurse told me that she was confirming that I was to be there at 7:30. I guess my appointment times got mixed up so I was supposed to be there in an hour. I rushed through a shower and me and my husband left for the hospital. It was strange walking in the doors of the hospital because I knew that the next time I walked out those doors, I would have my daughter.

  About an hour into being at the hospital, they gave me half a pill of Cytotec. They told me I had to have my blood pressure taken every fifteen minutes for a half an hour, and Rylee had to be monitored for an hour, then I was allowed to walk around for an hour. Wash, rinse, repeat. Those monitors drove me insane and I couldn't wait until I was allowed to be off the monitors for an hour. At the time of my first pill, I was 3cm dilated and 90% effaced. The first hour wasn't too eventful and when they took me off the monitors, I decided to walk around the halls with my husband.

The second round of Cytotec is when I started getting contractions that were decently painful. The hour that I was on the monitors seemed to take forever. My back was killing me, it took me everything I had when I got up to pee, to go and lay back down when I was done. My back was killing me with each wave of contractions, and I couldn't get comfortable to save my life. The straps for the monitors itched and I just didn't feel good overall. It was torture. This time when I was allowed to be off the monitors, I walked the halls once, took a short bath to soothe my back and then sat in the chair by the bed and checked my Facebook. It felt so good to not be forced to lay at an awkward angle for an hour.

After they hooked me back up, they also hooked me to a saline drip to prepare me for Pitocin. That took about an hour, but I still had to be hooked up to the monitors and the blood pressure machine, having one more thing attached to me was making things very uncomfortable. When I got checked this time I was at 4cm and still at 90% effaced. I decided to get the epidural before I was hooked up to the Pitocin, mostly for the hope of relieving my horrible back pain, and relief from the itching of the monitors. I'm going to tell you now, that epidural was my best friend for the rest of my labor (with the exception of the last two hours). I still wasn't able to sleep at all.

A few hours later, my doctor came in to check me, and if I was far enough along, break my water because at this time I had already been there for over 24 hours with little progress. He came in and I was at 5cm, so he decided to go ahead and break my water. After that things started to go a lot faster. Shortly after my water breaking my contractions started to get bad, I couldn't feel the pain, but I could feel and see my stomach tightening and I was starting to feel the pressure of Rylee pushing down on my cervix.

That's when I started to notice that something was off about my epidural, the amount of pain that I was feeling was starting to get unbearable and I was noticing that I was starting to be able to feel my toes. I mentioned it to my nurse who passed it off as nothing. She checked me and I was at 9cm and 100% effaced. I tried to sleep because I was already so tired but, I couldn't. Now the pressure was getting unbearable and I had this overwhelming pressure to push. When my nurse came back in I told her about needing to push and she told me that because it was my first labor that I wasn't actually going to be ready to push for another few hours. I panicked at hearing that and it took me a while to calm down. I could not stand the thought of being in this kind of pain for a few more seconds let alone for a few more hours.

I called her back in telling her that I really needed to push, and she told me to go ahead and push when I felt I needed to because "It wasn't going to do anything anyways" and left. About 30 minutes later, I called her back in and asked her to check me. When she did, I was at 10cm and 100% effaced. She was in the middle of telling me that "It would still be a few more hours" when I demanded to at least try to get her out now. I felt the need to push, Rylee was coming and I and the nurse wasn't able to stop it.

If you scrolled through to find the part where I actually start pushing and stuff gets dangerous, this is it!

She set everything up and put my feet up. She told me that when I pushed I had to put my chin to my chest, keep my back flat on the bed and put my hands behind my knees. She also told me that when I was pushing that I had to hold my breath while I pushed. The first few pushes were terrible. I couldn't hold my breath long enough, I kept screaming because I could feel EVERYTHING, and I couldn't keep grip of behind my knees.

The nurse kept yelling at me, she was telling me to stop screaming, "You're not going to push this baby out screaming!" Nothing she was telling me to do was working, Rylee was stuck under my public bone. At one point, my mom and my sister helped me lift my torso, so that I could reach the handle bars while I pushed, and this time, I screamed when I wanted and enjoyed the luxury of breathing with my contractions. After two pushes of those, she was crowning and the nurse called the doctor in. She told him that "it would still be a while"  and that he could "take his time". Thankfully, his office was across the hall from my room so he decided to walk over now. He walked in, and started putting on his gloves. While him and the nurse were talking, I pushed one more time. All I remember is that my mom shouted, the nurse spun around and caught Rylee because her head and her shoulders all came out at once. The doctor didn't even finish putting on his gloves and my daughter was born.

They placed her on my chest while my husband cut the cord. I couldn't stop staring at her. I held her hand and all I could say was "hello"  over and over again. Then they took her over to the weigh table and the doctor started to stitch me up. I tore in three different places, including the sphincter muscle. (Hah! I said Sphincter!!) It took about an hour to stitch me back up.

They helped me sit up and handed me my newborn daughter. Almost as soon as they placed her in my hands, I noticed something was wrong. I was starting to get dizzy, and my vision was blacking out. Everything after this is a blur. All I remember is that I told my husband to take Rylee because I was about to drop her and I told the nurses about my problem. They put another IV in my other hand and rushed saline in both sides to keep my veins from collapsing because I was starting to bleed out.

They rushed me into surgery to find out where the bleeding was coming from, and to stop it. While in surgery, I get I got a D&C and they came to the conclusion that there were no major tears. However, I'm anemic. THAT would have been great to know beforehand! While I was in the recovery room, I got a blood transfusion to start replacing the blood that I had lost. I was so tired at this point that I was literally going unconscious every 5-10 minutes and then I would wake up again and do it all over again.

Finally, the wheeled me back to my room so I could be with my husband and my daughter. Unfortunately, I was too weak to hold her for the first day or so and by the time I was able to attempt to breastfeed, she was used to the immediate satisfaction of the bottle. I feel like I missed out on a lot of those first days with her because I was either too weak, or I was falling asleep mid sentence. However, I would gladly relive all of it again. She makes everything worth it.
 Rylee Elaine King was born at 9:01pm May 16, 2013 at 7lbs 4oz and 21 and a half inches long.