This last fall I announced that our family was expecting our first baby after 3 years of multiple IVF rounds and failed embryo transfers. I’m so excited that our sweet Miles is finally here! I’m currently 11 days postpartum as I’m writing this, and I know that I’ll forget details if I don’t type it all out now. So I’ll be sharing the birth story of Miles- from pregnancy to my positive induction experience.
Pregnancy
Pregnancy was mostly uneventful, thank goodness. I had nausea on and off from 7 weeks to about 17 weeks. Heart burn from 20 weeks until the end of pregnancy, and back pain on my mid right side for the last 2 months if I sat for too long (mostly during car rides longer then 30 minutes or sitting at a restaurant for an extended period). It did force me to stay pretty active which was good!
I had 3 hospital visits throughout my pregnancy. One was for bleeding at 16 weeks, which was so scary because we were still in that miscarriage window. Thankfully baby was totally fine and I just had a low lying placenta that corrected itself a couple months later. Second hospital visit was due to terrible back pain after multiple flights and car rides around the holidays. I seriously thought I had a kidney stone or something. My back was throbbing, I was throwing up, and couldn’t keep anything down. It was a weekend, so we went to the hospital and again, everything was fine. The back pain was most likely from all the travel and I received fluids for dehydration from all the barfing 😅 Third visit was a false alarm when I thought my water had broken 3 days before my due date and I didn’t want to risk infection waiting it out at home. Turns out I just peed myself… wonderful.. So I guess when in doubt (and when it’s a weekend and your doctors office is closed), just go to the hospital. Each visit gave me peace of mind to know that our baby was ok.
Overall, I think my pregnancy was pretty good! I lifted weights, walked the treadmill, and did daily pelvic floor exercises and stretching my entire pregnancy. I also spent a lot of my third trimester listening to positive birth story podcasts. Positive experiences with all types of births including unmedicated, medicated, induction, c-section, etc. I think that medical interventions get a bad reputation and unmedicated births are made to be this ultimate birth experience. I did not want this mindset going into a birth at a hospital. So I purposefully educated myself on all birth scenarios, and surrounded myself with only positive birth stories with each of those scenarios. Highly recommend doing this if you are pregnant, no matter if this is your first child or if you’ve already been pregnant. I think a lot of birth trauma happens from being uninformed and fearing the unknown. The more educated your are, and the more positivity you surround yourself with, the better experience you are going to have.
Scheduling the Induction
Scheduling an induction was not on my original birth plan. Ideally, I wanted to go into labor on my own, labor at home for a while, and then deliver at the hospital. My husband and I had heard of horrible inductions that would last days, and we did NOT want to be at the hospital that long if we could help it. Something to also consider is IVF babies are at higher risk for complications, so we decided with our care team that we wanted to make it to 40 weeks before scheduling an induction. At 39 weeks + 5 days, I was already dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced, which meant my body was already preparing for labor and if we did schedule an induction, we would only have to do Pitocin and not any cervical softening. So the induction date was set to 40 weeks +1 day.
My Due Date
My due date came on a Saturday and it was such a fun and productive day! My husband and I went out for breakfast crepes, drove to Greenville to do some furniture shopping, went to a steakhouse for an early dinner, did a quick clean and tidy of the house, car, garage, then finished packing our bags before heading to bed. I’m so grateful we had that whole day to spend time together and to finish up any lingering tasks. And it was a nice way to spend our last day as a family of two.
Birth Story
We went into the hospital at 5am on February 9th, 2025 to get checked in. By 6:30am they had started the Pitocin, and I started feeling contractions around 7:15am. Our nurse, Amanda, was amazing! She got the birthing ball all set up for me to labor on and it was so wonderful to be able to move around during the early stages of labor. The doctor broke my water at 7:45am and contractions started really picking up. By 9:45am I was still only 3cm dilated and because of the continued increase of Pitocin, my contractions started feeling really painful. I asked for an epidural at 10:15am, by 10:45am it was placed, and by 11am I was feeling relief from the pain. I could still move my legs around but wasn’t feeling pain which was ideal. And our nurse helped me use the peanut ball in bed so that I was still moving around and helping my body to continue to dilate and progress (even with the epidural). Labor stalling was a fear of mine when getting the epidural, so I’m glad that my nurse was so diligent about helping me continue to move.
Around 12pm I started feeling nauseous and they gave me a nausea medication that I wasn’t familiar with. It made me sooooo tired. Like I could barely open my eyes, conversations were fuzzy, and my limbs felt really heavy (almost like a weighted blanket was on me). That was probably the worst part of the labor and delivery. I just didn’t feel fully present. By 3pm I was fully dilated and could start pushing. I remember telling the doctor that I thought I was too tired to push. I really felt like I had zero energy. Oh and despite the nausea meds, I starting throwing up like crazy right before pushing… so that wasn’t fun.
On the plus side, I only pushed for 20 minutes and baby Miles was here at 3:33pm! He stayed on my chest for close to 1.5 hours. During this time he did the breast crawl and breastfed for the first time which was on my birth plan and was so fun to watch. He weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces and was 21.5 inches long. After they took him off my chest to weigh and measure him, I started throwing up again… so my husband got to hold him and snuggle him for a bit.
At 6:30pm (3 hours after delivering), we were transferred to the postpartum floor. I’m glad we weren’t rushed out right after delivering. I was able to get a lot of that sleepy nausea medication out of my system and the epidural had worn off from at least 1 of my legs so I could move around a bit on my own. All in all, I felt like the induction and epidural went really smooth and I’m so glad I didn’t have to push for very long! Best case scenario IMO!
We spent the night on the postpartum floor and after the 24 hour baby check, we were cleared to go home. Total time spent at the hospital was 36 hours, which isn’t too bad. They actually asked if we wanted to stay a second night and we said no.. ha! I was excited to shower at home and sleep in my own bed. My husband made us french onion soup for dinner our first night home (he’s a wonderful cook), and then we settled in as a family of three!
I’m excited to continue to share more about my postpartum journey, finding my new normal as a first time mom, and continuing my photography business!
