I went into preterm labor w/my daughter a week before actually having her. When this happened I went to the hospital and they sent me home saying I was just having Braxton Hickes...haha yeah right. As soon as I got home, the contractions got about 100 times worse, so we called an ambulance to take me back to the hospital. This time they admitted me and eventually gave me 2 different injections to stop contractions. This all occurred the weekend before the 4th of July.

I was set up to be induced on the 15th of July, but my daughter must of thought that was too long to weight, because at 7:45 a.m. on July 10th, I rolled over in bed and my water broke. I woke my fiance up and told him I thought my water had broke, but I wasn't getting any contractions, so we spent about an hour calling his mom, my mom, my sister, and anyone else we knew who might know whether we should go to the hospital or if we should wait for contractions.

Finally, we went to the hospital and I was admitted at about 9 a.m. After about 3 hours of no contractions, I was hooked up to pitocin and started having really strong contractions almost immediately. After about 2 hours of pitocin-induced contractions they turned the I.V. off, thinking I'd continue progressing on my own...haha wrong, due to the injections I received the week prior, my contractions completely stopped again. Around 4 p.m. I called the nurse and asked if something was supposed to be happening and she once again started the pitocin. By 6 p.m. the contractions were coming on strong and I was only dilated to 3 centimeters, so I asked for the epidural (I'm a wuss, when it comes to pain). They administered that around 7 p.m. and I progressed to 5 centimeters w/only hunger pains to tell me when I was having contractions (I hadn't eaten since about 8 p.m. the night before).

At 8 p.m., my fiance left to take his brother home, since I hadn't progressed any further than 5 in the past hour. No sooner did he leave then I felt excrutiating pain in my left thigh. Thinking I needed another injection of Stradol (my blood clot was in my left thigh), I called the nurse. She said she just needed to check me for progress and then I could have another shot. Turns out that pain was my daughter's shoulder stuck on my hip, I was completely dilated, and my daughter's head was crowning. I was told to go ahead and start pushing (they thought I'd take a long time, I guess) while they ran to get the doctor. The doc got there at about 8:09p.m. and he literally had to push my daughter back in, so he could finish putting on his robes.

My daughter was born at 8:11p.m., much to the surprise of her daddy who arrived at about 8:13p.m. looking extremely confused. So, I guess I spent about 12 1/2 hours "in labor" and after 3 pushes my daughter was out.