But yeah, so I'm waiting for him to wake up, he finally wakes up and he sees like a mountain of pads in the bathroom and runs downstairs like, is it happening and I'm like, yep, we're having a baby today.

And so I stayed home as long as I could. I was like writing down my contractions in a notebook and they were just completely all over the place. There was no regularity to it whatsoever.

So by the time we were at like the 10 hour mark, I was like, we should probably just go.

And my husband drove me to the hospital and then had to drop me off outside.

Yeah, and I just sat on a bench and waited for my mom.

You're listening to the Mommy Liburners podcast where you'll gain the knowledge and confidence you need to erase the unknowns of pregnancy and birth and rock the newborn days like a boss.

My name is Liesel teen. I'm a fellow mom, labor and deliver nurse and your host.

Each week on this podcast, you'll hear a mix of birth stories, expert interviews and other fun, pregnancy and birth related content.

As a reminder, anything you hear in this podcast is not medical advice. Please see MommyLaburners.com slash disclaimer for more details.

And now let's get into this week's episode.

Hi guys, happy Monday. So this week on the Mommy Liburners podcast, I have a birth story lined up for y'all.

And let me just preface this is not any ordinary birth story. I mean birth stories, you know, most of them I wouldn't call any birth story ordinary.

But this one is especially intense and shall I even say the word COVID filled. Yep.

So this week I had Laurel join me on the podcast to talk all about giving birth in the heart of this pandemic that we all know too well.

Laurel and her husband both got COVID a few days before she was due and unfortunately her husband was not able to attend her birth and she had to give birth in the hospital alone.

The experience has taught her the value of advocacy before during and after birth and not only did she give birth in a pandemic, she had COVID during her delivery.

Yeah, her recovery from her experience has been long and heartfelt and less than easy to say the least. I wanted to have her on today to tell her story not only to shed light on what it's like to give birth with COVID, but to help you understand a quote unquote worst case scenario.

And understand how to fiercely self advocate if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

This is an emotional yet incredible story. So let's dive right in and hear from Laurel. Hey guys. So before we hop into this week's episode, I wanted to give you a quick update from a previous episode a few episodes ago.

I had Sarah come on to episode 100 of the mommy labor nurse podcast and talked to us all about her embryo transfer. Remember she was the single mom by choice.

And I wanted to update you guys. I hadn't heard from her, but I just heard from her that she is currently 18 weeks pregnant with a baby girl.

She is doing great and her pregnancy is going really, really well and she is due in April. So she even said that she's going to come back on later next year to do a birth story. So stay tuned for that episode.

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