The day Easton was put in my arms, my whole word changed. It was a day full of excitement, fear, joy, love, and many more. However; with every beautiful ending there is a beginning.  I want to share every detail from the day my whole world changed, so I am going to break his birth story into two parts.

Here is a look into part 1 of Easton’s birth story:

To really start from the beginning we have to rewind back to Wednesday, November 11th. I had my 39 weeks appointment at 11:45 AM. I was anxious to see if my body had made any progress on its own. The week before I had been just a fingertip dilated and 50% effaced. It had been that way for the past 2 weeks.

I went into the appointment knowing that we would probably have the talk about how long they would let me go. The entire pregnancy I just assume he would wait to come late. I don’t know why, just a guess I had. At the appointment she said I was a little over 1 cm dilated and 60% effaced. Not a ton of progress, but still it made me hopefully that something had happened. She also said I was now measuring a week behind, which was odd because I had always measured right. She didn’t seem concerned and said it was probably just due to the baby dropping some more.

We had the chat about how the next few weeks would look and set up an appointment for just over 40 weeks for an NST and they said they would schedule an induction for 41 weeks. It wasn’t something I really wanted, but I agreed and set up the appointment. I’ll admit at this point I was a little down. I had hoped to be further along, but many reassured me that it really doesn’t mean too much.

I went back to work that day to finish up month end. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t feel really any different than the other days. I had some pressure but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the past several weeks.

When I got home later that evening I did some work, cleaned up, and bounced on my exercise ball for a few minutes just in case it would get things going. It was a pretty typical night, nothing out of the ordinary, and I really had no idea everything was about to change – very quickly.

We went to bed around 9:00 pm like normal and felt fine. At 12:15 AM I woke up like normal and got up to go to the bathroom and get a drink. I got back in bed and tried to go back to sleep. About 20 minutes later I felt a rush of fluid and knew instantly what had happened. I ran into the bathroom and my husband quickly followed trying to figure out what was going on. I told him immediately “my water just broke.” It caught us both off guard because I’d had no cramping or really signs at all.

After I cleaned up we sat down and tried to figure out a game plan. I hadn’t had any contractions yet so after some research we decided not to head to the hospital right away but instead wait until I was having at least a few contractions. I’ve read in several different places to try to walk to help get contractions moving along, so Wes went up the street to get his run in (at 1:00 AM ha!) and I took advantage and decided I’d go walk around to try to get things started. I walked for about 30 minutes without anything, and then slowly started having some light cramping.

I got back in the car and started timing the contractions. They started pretty mild and were 6-7 minutes a part. Once Wes finished just a little bit later I gave him the update. We both showered, packed up the remaining things in the hospital bag, fed the animals, and left to go to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital right around 3:00 AM. I was busy texting everyone letting them know what was going on. Both our parents wanted to come up, but we had no idea how long the process would take. We let everyone know what was going and allowed them to make the call on when they wanted to arrive.

They checked me, asked me millions of questions, gave me an IV, and got me registered. When they checked I was still only 2 cm dilated but about 80% effaced, they knew that I was slowly progressing. They called my Doctor to try and get a game plan. In the mean time I just focused on getting through the contractions I was having every 5 minutes, which at this point weren’t that bad.

My parents arrived shortly after which helped to take my mind off everything. We talked for a while, turned on some Christmas music, and just tried to relax as much as we could. My husband was actually on OB call that morning, so since we were there he went and did his rounds and came back. Thankfully the early morning was pretty uneventful for the most part.

Around 5:00 AM the nurse came back and let me know that the doctor had said that if I had not progressed by 6:00 AM they wanted to start me on pitocin. I immediately started to panic. I honestly was not expecting to have to get pitocin so quickly. I knew if I didn’t progress that eventually I would, but it seemed so fast. Looking back on it now I wish I had requested that they wait a few more hours, but they made it seem really important so I just went with it.

My goal going into labor was not to have an epidural or really any pain medication. However; I also went in with an open mind knowing that if things changed then so be it. I knew that pitocin would not only speed up the process and contractions but also make it much more painful.

6:00 AM came and while my contractions had definitely sped up I was still doing okay. They checked me again and I had only progressed a little bit and still wasn’t at 3 CM. I knew what that meant and tried hard to keep myself calm and not focus on what was to come. I knew it was the only way I had a chance of getting through the next however many hours laid ahead of me (which ended up being 6).

They came in a little before 7:00 AM and administered the pitocin. I knew things were going to pick up quickly so I tried to ready myself for what was to come.

I will be back early next week with part 2 of my birth story! There is so much to share and instead of bombarding you with 5,000 words I’ll break it up. I really don’t have many pictures during this time because there wasn’t much going on and baby hadn’t come, but I promise I will make up for it in the next post!