What to Expect During Labor & Delivery

This was my third delivery & although every. single. delivery. was a different experience, they all had their similarities.

Each hospital is different as well, but here’s a glimpse at what delivering at Winnie Palmer in Orlando, FL was like.

My water broke at 35w3d, so I gathered my hospital bag and headed to the hospital. Upon arrival, I was placed in a triage room and hooked up to a monitor. The machines were monitoring baby’s heart rate, my heart rate, and my blood pressure levels.

While in triage, the nurse took bloodwork and swabbed me to confirm that my water had in fact broken. The doctor checked how far dilated I was because contractions were consistent and visible on the monitor.

I was then moved to a delivery room where they continued to monitor my progression. This is where I rode out contractions and requested an epidural. I ended up progressing from 4cm to 10cm in under an hour and I wasn’t able to have the epidural fully administered.

After delivery, baby and I spent an entire hour doing skin to skin before her vitals were taken. After the hour, they took her measurements and captured her foot prints.

We were then moved to a recovery room. We stayed in the recovery room for the next 2 days. The nurses completed around the clock checks on baby and I. During this time, I was asked to document my fluid intake and output, as well as how often baby fed and how many wet/dirty diapers baby had.

For my checks, the nurses would take my temperature, blood pressure, and would push on my stomach to monitor my bleeding. In addition to temperature checks, baby also had her sugar levels checked and a hearing test was administered. Because she was born prematurely, she also had to undergo a car seat trial before we could be discharged.

While in the recovery room, I had access to meal delivery and my own bathroom equipped with a shower. We were gifted a halo sleep sack as well as a backpack stuffed full of goodies before we went home.

Overall, my experience was great and the nurses were phenomenal. I have loved delivering all 3 of my children at Winnie Palmer.

If you’d like to see what some of the meals looked like and what kind of goodies we received, give me a follow! I’ll be posting more about my stay in the next few days!!

#labor #laboranddelivery #laborstories #roomtour #Lemon8Diary #motherhood #birthstory #pregnancy #postpartum #pregnantlife @Lemon8Parenting @Lemon8 Wellness Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies