My birth was great! My midwife was Kyndal; Kassidy was there too and Diana and a student named Ashton. And then I had my mom and sister and two friends, one of whom is in doula training. I only wanted two support people with me in my bedroom at a time until the end. Once I was pushing, I had no idea who was around me and didn’t feel “watched”. My labor was super textbook, a little fast for a first-timer. I was 41 weeks and 6 days. After weeks of prodromal labor and with very little patience left, I took the midwives' brew and went into labor a few hours later. I had never been so impatient to meet someone. I honestly felt like I was going to be pregnant forever! I kind of skipped early labor but I had been 3 cm for a couple of weeks. I didn’t know for sure that I was in labor until around 1:30 pm and then I asked for someone to come over and check me because it was so intense that I remember thinking that if it wasn’t doing anything, I was in trouble. I was only 4-5 cm, but I felt super encouraged that the contractions were causing cervical progress and that was good enough for me. I felt so encouraged by Kyndal. I remember her saying that I was doing really well and I just “needed to find my groove”. Kyndal left and I went and took a shower. It was hard to get comfortable during contractions because laying down made them hurt more. Standing and hands and knees were both great, but those positions can get kind of tiring so I mostly sat on my bed and then stood for contractions. Around 5 pm I started shaking super hard and threw up - I knew I had hit transition. Leading up to transition was the most intense my contractions got. They weren’t painful after that, just had a lot of pressure with them. Kyndal got back right at that time and I was 6 cm. She wanted me to try some different positions but they made the contractions super intense and I couldn’t. I then labored in the tub with some Epsom salts because my blood pressure was elevated and that felt amazing and lowered my blood pressure pretty fast. My water broke in the tub, then I requested another cervical check and was 9 cm, with only a little cervix left to dilate. I had to keep from pushing and that was insanely hard. I wanted to push SO badly, my body was just doing it without me being able to stop. Once I was completely dilated, I pushed for less than an hour, and then she was here! She was born at 7:52 pm with APGARs of 9 and 10 and weighed 8 lbs. and 14 oz. I was shocked and I remember telling her that I was so glad I had no idea how big she was going to be until after she was born! I remember feeling so blessed that I had the perfect birth. A few nights later, I had a dream that I was still pregnant and was so upset that I hadn’t gotten the beautiful birth that had happened in real life. It really did seem too wonderful to be true!