It was truly a magical experience. It's not like it is on TV, right? Where it just, oh, we rushed to the hospital, boom, there's the baby. For me, I just wanted the most positive experience for my daughter and I am I going to have that best experience or am I going to be on the other end of the spectrum? Because of my morphine allergy, I knew that if I needed to use an intervention, I would have to almost go to a C-section and I really didn't want to wake up and all of a sudden just have a child in my arms. The duel and I were working as a team to put pressure in certain places on Sherrington's body where it would help relieve the pain. I got out of the tub, they put me on the bed and I pushed less than five times and I was able to bring forth my daughter, they allowed me to pull her out of me and put her onto my chest and so it was just an amazing completion. After looking at things, I really felt like a natural childbirth would be the way to go. So I wanted to birth in a birthing center. It was a really beautiful experience just to kind of labor-free really. It really made me feel I think every step of the way that my midwife believed in my body. The pushing stage was really difficult for me but when they handed her to me, I felt like both of us, both she and I just took a huge sigh of relief because it was such work to get to the point that we were at. It was amazing. It was absolutely the birth that I felt I needed to have and hoped to have. They put me on the machine and they saw you're having contractions, pretty steady. We can induce you, tough to you, kind of think. I kept being offered an epidural and I kept reminding them, no, I don't want that. They put me on the EFM just for short interval to get the strip of how the baby was doing. His heart rate had dropped significantly. We were going to do what we needed to do to keep our son healthy, suggesting some alternatives that were very helpful in the end in achieving the birth that we had envisioned for our son. I was able to dilate at least four centimeters in half an hour and push him out in three pushes. I think that's all thanks to my doctor having an open mind. I was experiencing pre-trimal reconstruction so I was contracting a lot from the very beginning, like every two to three minutes and so I said, okay, now this must be it. And of course I was one centimeter. I was very, very upset. When the anesthesiologist placed the epidural, I continued to have the pain so they had to give me extra medication and so I really wasn't able to feel anything from the waist down. I knew how to push and but I just didn't like that someone had truly guide me on pushing. I spent a lot of time in the bath when I wanted to labor and when I went to the hospital. They didn't have a bath there but they had a shower and I went in there and these aren't things that I would have thought would have helped me but it ended up being extremely helpful and completely eliminated the pain. The doctor who was on call, he came in, he made me feel like I was on a timetable. Like the clock was ticking and it was time to get the baby out and move on. I think in having the apesia out of me it would have been better if we had made the decision together. I remember he brought in the table with everything on it and just started cutting. I wanted to know more, I wanted to say like we know what's the issue is there's something I could do differently and he would just say hold your breath and he and the nurse would count to ten sort of like shouting to encourage me along but it didn't help I felt really defeated. I actually felt extremely confident being a pregnant woman because I am an OB nurse and I have my master's in women's health so I had a lot of knowledge surrounding my pregnancy and it was kind of the time where all of my knowledge would be played out into true practice. I think the moment that I chose to be induced, that that was the moment that it was outside of my hands and it became this cascade of events that once they started rolling I couldn't stop. You know this was just what was going to happen to me because I was having an induction. I knew I was having a C-section and being on the bed and going back to the OR and it's I finally knew that every woman felt like when they were that woman in the bed. I really really wanted us to be able to have a natural birth and it was really important to Mariah. Things were progressing great. I started pushing. This was a huge accomplishment for me because with my first baby I didn't get to push. I was very excited. When they contacted this other doctor I never met her, had no idea who she was, knew nothing about her but she came in and she insisted that I go right to the OR. I asked her if she could give me reasons why I was in danger. If she could tell me if my baby was at risk right now, if I was at risk what was what was the concern that she had and she had no answers for me. It was all about getting it over with and getting it done and getting it done as quickly, quietly and as neatly as possible. I wish I had known more about recovery and what can happen and how how sort of vigilant to be about your body. If you have a C-section or you have an epidural, you didn't fail. I wish I had known that I could have requested a different doctor even the midst of labor. There's a lot of policies and protocols that women are unaware of that these policies and protocols may be fit a small percentage of the population who needs them but they're applied to everyone who comes through the hospital door. There's so many options before you get to an epidural. Women need to empower themselves, women need to empower each other, that we can do this. I think it's so important to give our bodies a chance to do what they were created to do naturally and when you're doing that you're giving your baby a chance as well. Birth doesn't just happen to you. This is your process. We have to be our own advocates and that you'd be surprised that when you question medical professionals, they actually will pause and consider what you have to say. I really wish that we took a childbirth and child education class. Childbirth education would provide me with the tools needed to believe that I could do this and empower myself and my husband to become our own advocates. It was an opportunity for my husband and I to talk through the what-ifs. He knew what plan B was, what plan C was, and could actively advocate for me. Overall it really helped us grow stronger as a couple which is really important for I think overcoming the challenges that we experience during childbirth and then definitely afterwards in parenthood. Get educated, know your options, and push for your baby.