If you know me well, you know that I am a huge fan of the epidural. I always joke about walking into the hospital and just asking for an epidural before I even know if I’m in labor. Shoot, if I could, I would get one for the last 10 weeks of pregnancy.
When I was induced at 39 weeks, this was my plan:
1.  Check into the hospital and get situated in my room.
2. Get started on Pitocin and labor until I’m around 4 cm dilated or until it starts to hurt a lot.
3. Get an epidural.
4. Take a nap and rest while my body does the hard work without me feeling any pain.
5. Wake up when I get to nine or 10 cm dilated.
6. Wake up the husband to give him a peptalk.
7. Push out the baby (hopefully only a couple pushes, but my first time I pushed for an hour and a half, so I didn’t have high hopes here).
8. Enjoy the bliss that is welcoming a new life, that is ours to love, into the world for the first time.
Here’s what actually happened on February 19, 2020:
1. We checked into the hospital an hour later than what I expected because my room wasn’t ready for me on time. We settled in and I got suited up in the hospital gown. Never felt cuter.
2. The nurse immediately checked me to see how dilated I was to start with. To my surprise, I screamed when she checked me, so I reassured my nurse that, “I’m not normally a screamer.” Please note: I’ve never gone all the way through labor without an epidural. See where this is going…? Anyways, as soon as she left the room I burst into tears of pain, but also tears of uncertainty. If I couldn’t handle my nurse checking me, how could I be ready to do labor?
3. She started me on a low dose of Pitocin.
3. Half an hour later I was at 3 cm dilated and my doctor broke my water. I know I was 3cm at this point because my doctor also checked me (with no pain, by the way. I guess my nurse had giant hands…if you know, you know).
4. At 11:00 I was 5 cm dilated and ready for 👏🏻that 👏🏻epidural. The anesthesiologist came in, and while he was placing the epidural we joked about how my husband can’t handle needles and how I would never go through labor without an epidural because that makes women do crazy things like scream and say things they don’t mean…at least according to the videos that I’ve watched.
5.  Around 11:30 the epidural was in place and I got some Jell-O to sustain me 🙄 I settled in for what I thought was going to be a power nap.
6. Pretty soon my right leg started to go numb, but I still felt my contractions everywhere else. News flash: the baby doesn’t poke its head (as my son likes to say) out of your leg, so this is pretty useless and unhelpful. I adjusted my body so I was laying on my left side to help the medicine flow to my left leg and everywhere in between. I didn’t remember how long it was supposed to take for the medicine to start working, but I called my nurse because it didn’t feel right. She came in and noticed that I was still in a lot of pain and I asked to see the anesthesiologist back again. He came in about five minutes later, took one look at me, and said, “You’re pretty uncomfortable aren’t you?”
7. At this point I had a death grip on my husband’s hand, and I couldn’t talk (much less breathe) through contractions. The anesthesiologist said he could try to adjust something, but he was sure that it should’ve worked the first time, judging by where/how he placed it.  He asked me if I wanted him to try to change something and I thought, “At this point I’ll try anything, because there is no way I’m delivering this baby without an epidural.” The nurse was a little bit more hesitant because she could see that it was going to be hard for me to sit still for him to adjust things. She suggested that she check my dilation one more time before he started working on me, just in case I was very dilated. She checked me, and sure enough, I was at 10 cm dilated and ready to push.
8. I immediately knew: I was going to have to deliver this baby without an epidural. I was completely mentally unprepared for this, and terrified. I looked up at Nathan and the two things I remember saying are, “I can’t do this. This was not the plan,” and “If I swear, will you forgive me?” Because at this point I was thinking shitshitshitshitshit 😂
9. The nurse called my doctor (multiple times, because he was busy delivering another baby at the exact same time), the baby nurses and anyone else who was supposed to be there. I think I had my eyes squeezed shut so I could focus on getting through each contraction, but my eyes flew open when they introduced the new doctor to me. Her name wasn’t one I recognized, and I remember looking at her and thinking, “Are you even a doctor? Oh well, as long as this means I can push and someone will catch my baby, I’ll take you.”
10. A couple contractions, and a lot of encouragement from the nurses and my husband later, and I was finally allowed to work with my body to deliver this baby. I think I pushed through about 5 contractions…spoiler alert: I’m a screamer 😬 Baby boy got his shoulder stuck, so the nurse pushed down hard on my abdomen, right above my pubic bone, while the doctor yanked his shoulder through. And the rest is history.
11. Except for when my doctor finally made it into the room and reached in to pull my placenta out…and then stitched me up. The rest is history.
12. Oh, and it took more than a day for the epidural in my right leg to wear off. So glad I got that. I also hope I get billed for it…
13. Also, I might have forgotten to breath in the midst of the pain, but I also didn’t end up swearing 😂 if you’re curious.

A Little Charisma 