Baby Melanie Luna was born January 22, 2020 at 34 weeks. Monday January 20, we had checkup with the doctor who decided we should go to the ER. Once there, we were monitored and after a few hours thinking we would get to go home, we were told they were going through with delivery plans instead. 
We had known she would come early due to the complications I had been having but not three weeks earlier than the already early date. 

Monday night into Tuesday morning at 1 a.m. the doctors started trying to induce labor by dilating the cervix through medication. Four hours later and....no dilation. Another round of medication. Four hours later and still nothing. They take a different route and put a folley tube, to “trick” the cervix into softening up and dilating. After about 8 hours, we had dilated to a 5. Wednesday, by now, but we’re staying dilated at a 5 for the majority of the day, but she had to come already because it had been 24 hours since they started trying to dilate me! Around 4:30 p.m. I start feeling like I’m about to poop and I’m getting desperate about to call my nurse when she comes in. She says that might be me dilating so she checks and we are at a 9! Finally. Edgar lets Vanessa and mom know since they were the ones I had planned on allowing in the room during delivery. The urge to push just keeps getting stronger and I cave and ask for an epidural that actually takes about an hour for the anesthesiologists to come by. At 5 p.m. my nurse says she has called my doctor but we want to wait an hour since Melanie’s lil head is there and the softer my cervix gets the easier it’ll be. 

My doctor gets here at around 6 p.m. she says we’re going to do some practice pushing to see if we’re gonna be pushing long and if we need to call NICU staff.
We start going through the pushing and I can’t tell if I’m doing anything, it doesn’t feel like I’m pushing. Realize it’s going to be a while. I remember hearing someone in the background say I’ve been pushing for 45 minutes, I feel defeated. All this time I thought this would be the fast part. They keep telling me she’s stuck under the pelvic bone and I just feel like they’re trying to break all my bones. 

I remember screaming out that I could not do it, hyperventilating that I was failing my little baby. I felt like I passed out, but I did not, I just know the next thing I knew was she was on my belly. She was born at 7:28 p.m., an hour and a half of pushing.

The NICU staff took her and then brought her back wrapped up and set her next to me and told me to give her a little kiss but I couldn’t even move, I couldn’t do anything and I just whispered to her that she was my little burrito. Then they took her up to the seventh floor with all the NICU babies and I got sewed up from a first degree tear. 

I had to stay on magnesium medication for 24 more hours (had been since Monday) after delivery which meant I could not get up and move and even worse go see my baby. 

It has been a long and unexpected journey and I really just want my baby at home with me. Pregnancy is hard. Birthing is hard.