February 10, 2026

Heyy so...long time no talk. I had a baby!
Little Mabel was born on August 28 at 2pm after about 30 hours of labor!


We got to the hospital at 8 am and did all the usual checking in stuff. I had actually just been there two days earlier because - funny story - Mabel decided that, after being head down (like she was supposed to be) for months, she wanted to try and flip around just a few weeks before she was due. She got stuck sideways in my belly and we had to go to the hospital and hope that they could turn her so that I could still have a vaginal birth. Otherwise I would have had to have a c-section, which I really didn’t want to do if I could avoid it. Luckily, that was successful (and a very weird experience) and we went back two days later to be induced.
We met our nurses, who were great and one of whom was also very pregnant, and my parents showed up maybe an hour or two after we got there, and we settled in for the process.
They started me on pitocin and cytotec to get labor started and strapped monitors to my belly to make sure Mabel was okay through the whole process. It was a relatively uneventful day; we watched TV, got food from a food truck, and they upped the pitocin every so often as I labored away, confident I’d be able to manage the low intervention labor I was hoping for.
But that evening we learned that I was hardly dilated at all - maybe 1 cm, which was disheartening, so they recommended the balloon. The balloon is actually two connected bulbs where one is placed just past the cervix and the other sits in the vagina. They’re then filled with saline to mimic baby’s head and put pressure on the cervix, prompting it to soften and dilate.
The balloon was the one thing (aside from a c-section) that I really didn’t want, but I didn’t really see any other options at that point so we went ahead with the balloon. While I still think it was the right way to go, the balloon was, without a doubt, the most difficult part of my entire labor. The insertion was very uncomfortable and then once it was inserted my contractions were just overwhelming. I was getting hit with a contraction about every other minute or so and between that and the discomfort from the balloon, I felt like I was drowning. Just as one contraction would fade and I’d catch my breath, I’d be hit with another wave.

I was exhausted, I desperately needed rest, so at that point, they stopped the pitocin and gave me something to help me sleep, which was a godsend. I slept in fits and bursts and in the very early hours of the next morning, the balloon came out which meant I had dilated to about 3-5cm.
We started up the pitocin again and things were moving along!
Within a few hours, I was at about 8cm. At this point, contractions were becoming quite intense and difficult to manage and I did decide to get an epidural, though my goal was to do without it. I really agonized over it for a while because I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, but Calvin convinced me, saying that just because I could do it didn’t mean I had to, and that the epidural would allow me to actually be more present for the experience.
So I got the epidural and labor went on. I even managed to sleep a few stretches! Things were definitely progressing but Mabel refused to move down into the birth canal.
However, we had moved far enough along that the nurses and midwife were now talking about moving me over to the delivery room. Because I was induced, which typically takes longer, we were first placed in a laboring room with the intention of moving over to a delivery room when we were further along.
As they started making preparations, things suddenly started happening very quickly. I started feeling light urges to push and at one point, I felt as if…something was coming out of me but wasn’t sure what. I asked my mom (who is a nurse) to take a look. Apparently it was my water sac (still intact!) slipping out of my body; a few moments later it broke and started to leak.
Looking back, this moment feels very bittersweet, as it seems we were very close to having an en caul birth (a birth in which the baby is born completely encased in the amniotic sac, considered to be lucky or a good omen) and I just think that would have been very cool but alas, ‘twas not to be.
Once my water had broken, the urge to push increased tenfold and, in fact, I could feel her coming whether I pushed or not. I told the nurses she was coming and the urge to push was strong and they went to get the midwife to check me again, but no one was really in a hurry. After all, they had just checked me about half an hour ago and I was at 8 cm and Mabel hadn’t even begun to descend.
But I could feel her coming fast and was starting to panic that I’d have to catch her myself (and of course I imagined her slipping from my hands and falling to the floor). My mom must have seen on my face that I was serious because she asked if I wanted her to go get someone and I nodded emphatically. A few minutes later the midwife came to check me and was shocked to find that I was fully dilated and Mabel’s head was right there, practically crowning!
Everybody scrambled to set up a makeshift delivery table and get me in position (I was unhelpful in this endeavor as the epidural had rendered my legs useless).
There was a calm moment before I started pushing when Calvin and I just looked at each other, tears in our eyes, and time slowed down just for a minute. It felt momentous, the final minutes before our lives changed forever.