In this personal vlog, Natalie Barnes (who also goes by Natalie Nicole) recounts her unexpected, 44‑hour labor and delivery experience that resulted in the birth of her daughter Arabella Nicole. She describes the early signs of labor, the long wait for contractions to become regular, and the involvement of her fiancé Sam, Sam’s mother (a doula), and her own family. Natalie explains how she followed her birth plan, received IV antibiotics, Pitocin, and two doses of a medical IV for pain before ultimately getting an epidural. When a doctor suggested a C‑section, Natalie advocated for herself, used all‑fours positioning, and after a nurse ruptured her water she dilated rapidly and delivered a healthy, 6‑plus‑pound baby. She details the birth process, including second‑degree tears, stitches, and the newborn’s initial tests (including a hearing test that initially failed but later passed). Post‑delivery, she shares her postpartum recovery, hospital meals, showering challenges, and the first week at home with Arabella, including meeting the family dog Tank. Throughout, Natalie offers practical advice (e.g., staying upright during labor) and reflects on the emotional highs and lows of the experience.
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Say hi guys, welcome back to my mom's channel. Hi guys, what's up? It's Natalie Barnes. Welcome to or welcome back to my YouTube channel. So today we have a special guest. Should we announce your name? Should we tell everyone your name? Because everyone's been waiting. This is Arabella. She's sleeping right now. As you guys can see, I had my little baby. My due date was March 22nd and I had her on March 20th, so she kind of came a little early. In today's video, I'm going to be telling you guys my delivery story and basically my labor story and how that kind of went for me. I know so many people have so many different experiences and and I loved listening to them when I was pregnant. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Yeah, this is Arabella. Let me see if I can— see, my name is Arabella Nicole. Okay, so basically my labor was extremely long. It was about 44 hours altogether. So my labor actually started at 3 o'clock on Friday. I noticed I like peed myself basically, and then I went to the bathroom, and then I my mucus plug came out, and I was not sure if my water broke or not because it was like slowly— I was like slowly peeing myself, but I was not peeing myself. So I called my OB-GYN and no one picked up at the office, so I left a message with my name, information, everything, just kind of saying like, is this normal? What should I do? Anyways, no one called me back. And then that night I remember I got like the worst contractions ever. I was just sitting in bed crying because I was in so much pain and I like had no idea what was going on at the time. Saturday morning came and the contractions were just getting really bad and I had an app on my phone to kind of time the contractions. They were really not frequent, like they just weren't adding up, and I'd have some that were like 18 minutes apart, some that were 7 minutes apart, some that were like 3 minutes apart. And then, so then Sam's mom came over, which he's my fiancé, his mom's a doula. She came over and basically helped me with breathing. When you're in labor and you start having contractions, it's really hard to focus on breathing and to like keep breathing. At first I thought that was so dumb and I was like, oh my god, I can definitely breathe on my own. Not a big deal, but in the moment you literally can't. All you can focus on is the pain. So luckily she was here to help me breathe and kind of go through everything. She told me I needed to call my doctor, so I did, and he basically said, "Don't come in unless they're 5 to 3 minutes apart, because if they're not, they're just gonna send me home." I was like, "Okay, cool, I'll wait." So that's what I did. All day I had contractions. I was standing up, I was in bed, I was literally all over the house trying to get myself to get through these contractions. I called my mom and my sister. I told them that they're definitely gonna have to come up because I was going to the hospital. So they did, and then my sister brought me Chick-fil-A, and I remember eating the Chick-fil-A and I just got this really, really, really bad contraction, and that's when I knew. I was like, this is just gonna get worse. So I finished the Chick-fil-A, and then right after I finished, it was just like back-to-back contractions. And that's when we decided to go to the hospital. So at this point, my contractions were 5 to 3 minutes apart. So we got into the car, drove straight to the hospital. I remember I was like in the waiting room for 10 minutes, like literally feeling like I was dying. And then finally I went back to a room. They had to check to make sure my water did break, which which it did. Like, they do like this little tiny test, um, to see the fluid. I guess it was definitely my water that broke. Um, they also checked to see if I was dilated, which I was. Yeah, I was 1 centimeter, I think, or a half. And I was like, there is no way. I'm in so much pain. How am I just not dilated? Like, I was so mad because I was in so much pain and I didn't want them to think that I wasn't in pain. So obviously since my water broke, they had to just admit me, like, so they transferred me into another room. I handed them my birth plan. They were so happy I had a birth plan. I guess not many people have one, so they were kind of shocked that I had one and I really wanted to follow it. And I remember they hooked me up to IV and then they also had to give me an antibiotic IV. The contractions were so bad that they had to give me medical IV, which which is kind of like an epidural but not really. It just helps with the pain for about an hour. So I had 2 of those and they helped for about 2 hours, and then it was just— I was just crying a lot because I was in so much pain. But if I had one advice, it's to stand up. Don't lay in bed because they're 10 times worse. So what I did was I stood up, I swayed, I I like moved so much and it helped a lot. They gave me Pitocin, which basically helped with my contractions to make them even stronger to help me dilate. So they gave me Pitocin and then after that about an hour went by, or maybe it was like 30 minutes, they gave me an epidural and that made everything so much better. I didn't think I was going to get the epidural and then the pain kind of got to me. So I got the epidural at night, and then the next day was Sunday. Um, oh, are you talking now? So then Sunday the 20th, the doctor came in around, I think, 8, and kind of woke me up and basically said that he wanted to check me to see how dilated I was. So he did, and I think I was barely like a 1, which 1.5, and he said I was going to have to have a C-section, that he was planning on giving me a C-section. Had to check the schedule and then check me again in like an hour. And since my water broke, they couldn't like do as many cervical checks on me as they wanted to because I would be high risk for infection. The doctor left, and then I guess he was checking on either putting me on the C-section sheet that they do, or checking on another patient. I don't really know what he was doing, but he came back in an hour, and I told my nurses that I really did not want a C-section. I was like, I don't want this at all, this was never in my plan, we need to figure something out. So then my nurse, my head nurse, told me to get on all fours on the bed. And keep in mind, I still had an epidural. So I could not feel my legs. So I did, and she told me to stay like that for about 30 minutes. So I ended up lasting for, I think, 40 minutes, and I just remember shaking really bad and feeling like I had to poop. And that's when I called my nurse back in, and I asked her to check me instead of my doctor because my doctor is like this really big guy with big hands, I feel like. And this— the nurse that I had was kind of small, so I was like, can you please check me? So she said she wasn't supposed to but ended up doing it, and she felt like a sac, I guess, and which was my water. She also felt her head. She was like, I don't think your water broke, I think you ruptured it. So she called the doctor back in and she told him that she thinks my water never broke, that I just ruptured it. So the doctor checked and he just broke my water, and it was super easy. I didn't even feel anything. And then I went from like a 1.5 to I think like an 8 or a 9 in minutes. And then they were like, okay, we're gonna start pushing. I was like, okay, at this point I really don't care. I just want to like meet her and get this all over with. Because I'm so tired. So yeah, they gave me a wet washcloth and I put that on my head and that kind of helped because I covered my eyes too because I got like really, really hot. And I just remember Sam had one of my legs, the other nurse had the other leg, and I felt like I pushed for like 15 pushes, like 15 sets of pushes because there's like 3 sets. Or 3 pushes in a set. And then she was like, let me get the doctor. And then the doctor came and I did a couple pushes with him, and then she was here. And I was saying she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Anyways, so then I had her and they gave me her right away, and we just sat there for a little bit, and then, and then Sam cut the umbilical cord. And they basically followed everything that I wanted in my birth plan. The only thing they said they couldn't do was allow Sam to catch her, which like I understand, but it still would have been cool. Yeah, she came. She was over 6 pounds, dropped down to 9 ounces. She passed all of her tests, and I think I pushed for like around an hour actually, now that I'm about it. And that was not hard. I didn't think like pushing her out was hard. I was always like afraid of what that'd feel like. I did have second-degree tears, and then I had stitches as well. But yeah, she was like the easiest baby to push out, I felt like. And my epidural actually wore off too, and I asked my nurse if I should like— because they give you like a button to click, so like when you start to feel your legs or pressure, you're supposed to click it so you don't feel anything. And I was starting to feel like a lot of pressure, and she told me not to press it just so it could like encourage me to know like she was coming and to know like when the next contraction was coming, which I'm so happy I did. So yeah, they did all of her tests, and then Sam got to hold her for a little bit, and it was like the best moment ever. Like, I just could not even believe it. Huh? You just could not even believe it. And then after like all the nurses and everyone left, around 2 hours after that, good enough to like stand up, so, to go to the bathroom because you're supposed to. And I tried to stand up and I got extremely nauseous and I had to sit back down and then they gave me some medicine to help me not feel nauseous and then they brought a wheelchair, which I kind of felt stupid about getting in because I knew I could walk to the bathroom in time. I just like had to wait. So then I was like, whatever, let me just get into this wheelchair and go. So then I got into the wheelchair, we went all the way into the bathroom, and when I was going to the bathroom— oh, hello! Heh, you look awesome. Thanks! So then I was going to the bathroom and I tried to— stupid me— I tried to stand up again thinking I was perfectly fine, and I threw up. So that wasn't fun. And then after I threw up, I felt like so much better, and they wheeled me back into the chair. And then like an hour went by, and then I felt good enough to walk. So I got up. I like had OCD and wanted to clean the whole entire room, so that's basically what I did. And I wanted to get her announcement pictures done as well, so I got her dressed and we took the pictures. And I started cleaning the room, kind of moving all the water bottles and, you know, stuff everyone brought. And since I got the stitches, I was bleeding a lot, so they had to like keep changing my sheets and stuff. I wrote everything down. Monday they moved us to a postpartum room. Um, we got our like little special meal. I'll insert a picture here what that looked like. It was super yummy. I think like, at least for me, I think after you have the baby, you have like— like before you have the baby, you have like such a big stomach and like you feel like you're gonna eat a lot, and then after you deliver the baby, your stomach, I feel like, shrinks. So I wasn't really that hungry after I had her. So they brought us like the special meal and it was super good. And Sam got a steak and I got a chicken. And then we forgot to eat our desserts, which was kind of sad. But she like slept all throughout the night. Oh, and then I got to shower, which showering was not the best, I felt like. Um, I felt like really, really weird trying to shower because standing up after you have a baby is just weird in general and just feels off. So, but I wanted to get clean, obviously. So we— I took a shower, Sam took a shower, she had her first bath. Um, she had to have a hearing test, and then the first time she failed, so I started panicking. And then at like 4 o'clock in the morning, they took her from our room and Sam went with her to do another hearing test. That one easily, which is really good. Then on Tuesday, we were both cleared to go home. My doctor came, checked me, said I could go home. Pediatrician came, checked her, and said she was perfect and that we can go home. And then we came home and we met Tank, my dog. And what we did was— Tank was— when I first had her, the little hat that they gave us, um, I gave to my sister to bring home to Tank. And this is like the video of him like smelling everything. Here you go. So yeah, I'm really happy I did that with him. And since we've been home, it's almost been a week as you guys see this, because this is going up on Sunday. Yeah, it'll be 1 week since I've had her, and everything's been really, really good. We've just been really learning how she is and feeding her and snuggling her and putting her in ridiculous outfits. But yeah, that's about it. That was my labor and delivery story. Anyways guys, that is it for today's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. You have anything to say for everyone? Do you have anything to say? Say hi guys, thanks for watching my mom's video. My name is Arabella. Thanks guys for watching. I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye guys! Say bye guys! See you guys in my next video. I'm gonna be a regular on this channel. Love you guys!
