If you missed Part I, click here.
For Part II, click here.

The sleeping medicine takes effect quickly.

I’m out. Like really, really out.

Until now. I’m awake enough to know I’m experiencing extremely intense contractions. It’s involuntary, but I feel my body trying to escape this bed and this place, attempting to leave itself behind and get somewhere safe. 

The brutal contraction finally ends and I’m completely knocked out again. 

//

Unbeknownst to me in Ambien-land, the following takes place: 

Within a few hours, I go from hardly 3 cm dilated to a full 6 cm. They order my epidural and Brandon texts my mom to alert her that labor is picking up, and she comes back to the hospital.

I’m very, very asleep. So asleep in fact, that I am utterly unaware that the epidural is being placed. (I hope that conveys my level of unconsciousness!) It takes a team to hold me in place: Brandon, my mom, and a nurse while the anesthesiologist works in between my wake ups and contractions, which are only minutes apart.