On may 25th at 5:12 pm after 5 hours and 4 minutes of labor Boden Troy was born weighing 7lbs 6oz at exactly 35 weeks on the dot.

Thank goodness for my friend Melody! On Sunday I started having contractions and after 2 hours I decided to take them seriously. I checked myself; my water bag was bulging and it felt like I was dilated to 4 or 5 (I don’t think I can even express exactly how helpful it was the find a diagram showing cervical dilation in one of my pregnancy books. Had I not had that as a reference guide, I most likely would have ignored this whole episode until it was too late). We tried calling all of our backup and every.single.family member was at WORK!! Melody came to our rescue though and rushed over to look after our 3 kiddles.

On the car ride over to the hospital DH and I kept thinking that they were just going to send me home. My contractions were demanding my attention but I had been through several similar bouts over the preceding few weeks so I was expecting them to peter out any moment. As we got closer to the hospital I started getting a little irrational, yelling at all the people who seemed to be in our path meandering around town foolishly below the speed limit.

Inside the L&D triage waiting room I was struck with a powerful contraction. I had my hand wrapped around the sign in pen and was stabbing at the paper trying to fill it out as quickly as possible. I must have looked rather impressive because we were taken back immediately, ahead of several other people who were patiently waiting.

Once in a triage room, I was checked and told they were keeping me. I was indeed dilated to a stretchy 5 with bulging waters and now completely effaced. We started calling around to get the word out- it’s baby time! A pencil pusher came in to get all my insurance info and profusely apologized as I grunted my way through the initialing and signing process that felt like it was 500 pages long. The poor guy looked flat out terrified that I was going to blow right then and there. One of the nurses came in and surprisingly got my IV started on the first try. At this point there were three nurses in the room getting ready to move me and they all cheered when I told them I wouldn’t be needing an epidural.

Within 25 minutes of checking in, I was up in a delivery room and had progressed to 6. A few contractions later I felt the baby perform some acrobatic maneuver and the contractions were no longer pulsating in my back but rather in my pelvis- little man swung himself around into proper position and I could feel him moving down with each contraction. Suddenly my bag of water broke, the pain became intense. A nurse checked me and I was at 8. Another contraction rolled in while she was checking me and I hollered that I needed to push. She quickly confirmed that I had gone from 8 to complete in the span of one contraction!

The room went nuts. I was yelling that I needed to push and everyone was yelling back “Blow, don’t push, blow!” I fought hard to try and blow but my body said NO WAY and started pushing. As the next contraction waved over me I bared down and gave birth.

That moment was a huge triumph. I had a completely unmedicated and unaugment labor- exactly what I had hoped for. And as a nice cherry on top, my first baby that was not sunny side up!