How She Got Here

I need to write down Ameilya's birth story before I forget it and I thought I would go ahead and post it on here. Don't worry, I won't tell you any gory details, there aren't really any anyway ;)
So Sunday before she was born, the 6th of October, I had kinda been feeling like I was "leaking" all day. I thought I just had a lot of extra discharge in preparation for her to be born. We went to bed around 9pm that night (thank goodness!) and around midnight I got up to use the restroom. I was about to go back to bed when I realized that my legs and underwear were wet. Not soaked, just wet. So I went about changing and almost went back to bed. Then I realized what was really going on and that we probably needed to go to the hospital. Tyler and I talked about it for a while and decided that we better get everything ready and head to the hospital. We took our sweet time packing and driving there and got there around 3am. I was only having contractions about twice an hour and they weren't strong at all. Once we got to the hospital and told them that I though my water had broken they did a test to confirm and told us that the results usually took about 30-45min to show up but ours showed up within about 5 min. Sure enough my water had broken and we were about to have a baby, it felt like it would never happen. Since I wasn't contracting I had to be given a medicine called Pitocin which induces labor. They gave my body about 10 hours to start labor and nothing was happening, in fact my contractions were slowing. Kinda the opposite of what we wanted to have happen! I really didn't want to have to have Pitocin since it makes contractions super strong and I wanted to see if I could make it through labor without any pain medication and I knew that with Pitocin I probably wouldn't be able to. There is an infection risk for the baby if the bag of water has broken and the body isn't doing anything to get the baby out, this is why we had to use the Pitocin. For hours after the Pitocin was started I didn't have very bad contractions and my cervix wasn't dilating. I was dilated to a 2 when I went in and spent about 18 hours dilated at a 4 or less. I finally did get an epidural, which made the contractions much more bearable. There was a time where my midwife was talking about the possibility of needing a c-section because my cervix wasn't dilating. They messed with the dosage of the Pitocin to see if they could get it to work better on me; they cut the dose in half and gradually stepped it back up, they turned it off for an hour and then gradually stepped it back up and did all sorts of things like that trying to get it to work. And finally, around 6am on the 8th of October I was dilated to a 7. Things were finally starting to progress. Around 7am my epidural had completely worn off and I started pushing. The midwife who delivered Ameilya (Jo) had me use different techniques to push, the one that was most effective was when I was laying on my back and grabbing a bed sheet that was tied to a pole over my bed. And finally, after a little over three hours of pushing, Ameilya arrived. What they didn't tell me (thank goodness) was that her shoulder got stuck on the way out causing me to tear (I knew I tore, just not about her getting stuck). Apparently I tore twice. Not sure how but that's what happened. I cried after she was born, because I was so happy to finally be holding our daughter and that she was really going to be a part of our family and I was so overwhelmed with love for this sweet little girl who I had the privilege to carry for 9+ months. I love her more than words could ever describe and I am so happy to be her mom. She is truly one of God's choice children on this earth and I'm so excited to see the person that she will become.