On Tuesday, July 29th, 2022, at 40+4 weeks pregnant, my girlfriend and I decided to try the infamous labor-inducing burger at The Suburban around 7pm at night for dinner. Not long after, around 10 pm that same night my water broke! I attempted to sleep for a bit, but woke at 1:30 am to contractions. When I went to the bathroom I noticed a good amount of blood in the toilet so I immediately reached out to my doula. After discussing things with her and contacting my provider, I was instructed to head to the local hospital, Waconia to be monitored. This was not the hospital I had plans to deliver at, but my on-call doctor was concerned by the amount of blood and even considered calling 911. However since Waconia was close, we decided that since I didn’t have to travel far, to just head to that hospital right away. We arrived at Waconia at 3am and they brought me right in to monitor Bodhi and everything looked good! I was only dilated to a 3 so I asked if we could leave. They said we could go as long as we went straight to Woodwinds, the hospital I planned to deliver at. After talking to my doula, we decided that I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible, but because we had over an hour drive to Woodwinds, she wanted me to time contractions and leave for the hospital once they were 10 min apart consistently for an hour. I was timing contractions on my phone and Joel was telling me the start time of each contraction from the alarm clock in our room. We eventually realized that the clock was off by 2-3 min! Once we figured that out, we started only checking our phones and I think my contractions were only 8 mins apart so we decided to leave the house, which was around 8:30 am. We arrived at the hospital around 9:30am and my contractions were now coming every 6 min. They admitted us and put me in a room right away, started filling the bathtub and checked my cervix. My cervix was dilated to a 7! They also did a covid test almost immediately. Then they realized I needed heart monitoring as a result of my heart condition but the room they originally put me in couldn’t pick up the signals from the floor above so we had to change rooms 
So I walked down the hallway in my bra and disposable undies 
The nurse later told me “you had no shame and even walked past the hot acupuncturist!” Lol. So then we got settled into the new room and because they hooked me up to all the monitors I couldn’t go in the tub, which was a major bummer because that was 100% part of my birth plan. My doctor was also on board with that but of course this one week he was out of town. So that was hard for me! Anyways, I pretty quickly dilated to a 9 but then stalled there for approximately 6 hours. At my next cervix check, the nurse checked while I was leaning over laboring and thought I was pretty much effaced besides an anterior lip, but when the Doctor checked me on my back she said I was only 80% effaced and that Bodhi was still high in the birth canal, so the plan was to be more upright so that gravity would help get him move down. So I changed positions and tried all sorts of things to get him to move down, all while having crazy back labor the entire time. I don’t remember feeling my contractions in my stomach at all, only in my back. My hips were so incredibly tight and I couldn’t relax them because of the back pain, which is why I think he wasn’t moving down in the birth canal. After sometime, the Doctor came back in to check my cervix again and I was dilated to a 9.5, but still had the anterior lip of my cervix. She said she could hold up the lip and I could attempt to push but he was still super high in the birth canal and I would probably have to push for a super long time, which was exactly what the heart doctors didn’t want me to do. So at that point, I decided it was a good idea and time to utilize an epidural to help my hips relax and open up so he could move lower into the birth canal so I wouldn’t have to push as long. The epidural was administered at 4:10pm. The contractions slowed down a bit and I felt like a brand new person. I was suddenly energized and talking to everyone. We utilized the peanut ball on my sides to help him rotate and move down the birth canal. A new Doctor came in and talked with me a couple times. She talked about using the vacuum and/or forceps (that’s an entire other story with my heart and why I switched doctors at 36 weeks) because of my heart condition but I advocated and requested that she let me attempt to push unassisted before we did that and she agreed. At 6:15pm, after laboring down with the epidural, I was ready to push and at 7:17pm Bodhi was born, unassisted!! No tearing. No hemorrhoids. The Doctor on call was the Chair of all the OBs at Woodwinds. She was super firm, but still very nice in a weird way. Like you could tell she was the boss She was massaging my perineum the entire time and said he was moving down little by little even in between contractions. She kept asking if I was contracting when I wasn’t because I was breathing him out slowly. A technique I learned in a class I took. It was wild!
So I walked down the hallway in my bra and disposable undies The nurse later told me “you had no shame and even walked past the hot acupuncturist!” Lol. So then we got settled into the new room and because they hooked me up to all the monitors I couldn’t go in the tub, which was a major bummer because that was 100% part of my birth plan. My doctor was also on board with that but of course this one week he was out of town. So that was hard for me! Anyways, I pretty quickly dilated to a 9 but then stalled there for approximately 6 hours. At my next cervix check, the nurse checked while I was leaning over laboring and thought I was pretty much effaced besides an anterior lip, but when the Doctor checked me on my back she said I was only 80% effaced and that Bodhi was still high in the birth canal, so the plan was to be more upright so that gravity would help get him move down. So I changed positions and tried all sorts of things to get him to move down, all while having crazy back labor the entire time. I don’t remember feeling my contractions in my stomach at all, only in my back. My hips were so incredibly tight and I couldn’t relax them because of the back pain, which is why I think he wasn’t moving down in the birth canal. After sometime, the Doctor came back in to check my cervix again and I was dilated to a 9.5, but still had the anterior lip of my cervix. She said she could hold up the lip and I could attempt to push but he was still super high in the birth canal and I would probably have to push for a super long time, which was exactly what the heart doctors didn’t want me to do. So at that point, I decided it was a good idea and time to utilize an epidural to help my hips relax and open up so he could move lower into the birth canal so I wouldn’t have to push as long. The epidural was administered at 4:10pm. The contractions slowed down a bit and I felt like a brand new person. I was suddenly energized and talking to everyone. We utilized the peanut ball on my sides to help him rotate and move down the birth canal. A new Doctor came in and talked with me a couple times. She talked about using the vacuum and/or forceps (that’s an entire other story with my heart and why I switched doctors at 36 weeks) because of my heart condition but I advocated and requested that she let me attempt to push unassisted before we did that and she agreed. At 6:15pm, after laboring down with the epidural, I was ready to push and at 7:17pm Bodhi was born, unassisted!! No tearing. No hemorrhoids. The Doctor on call was the Chair of all the OBs at Woodwinds. She was super firm, but still very nice in a weird way. Like you could tell she was the boss She was massaging my perineum the entire time and said he was moving down little by little even in between contractions. She kept asking if I was contracting when I wasn’t because I was breathing him out slowly. A technique I learned in a class I took. It was wild! Omg and I also tested positive for Covid because I had Covid back in May and was still within the 90 days… which was an entire ordeal. Per protocol, they should’ve asked me if I have had it in the last 90 days and if I said yes they shouldn’t have even tested me. But because everything was moving so quickly, they gave me a PCR and since it came back positive, they had to treat me like I actively had it. The nurses had to wear extra PPE and my mom who was in the waiting room was sent home. They usually would have sent doulas home as well and weren’t going to let anyone in or out of my room, but once I decided on the epidural the nurse came in and told me she talked to infectious control and cleared me so my mom could come back was there for the birth as well 
