She's Heeeeere!

Labor Story:

Started feeling contractions about every 15 minutes while out to dinner with mom & John at... Angelo's restaurant around 6:00-6:30. Said to them "I could be wrong, but I think this time it's the real thing" Contractions kept up through the rest of the evening some stronger and longer than others - somewhere in the range of 5-10 minutes apart and I started losing more of the mucus plug.

Called the dr on call at midnight - he told me to rest - I tried ... didn't work. So I found myself pacing around the house (I told John to get to bed & get as much sleep as possible) - quarter to 3 I decided I couldn't wait any longer and wanted to get to the hospital, contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and getting stronger.

Got to the hospital around 4:30 and I was only 3 centimeters dialated. After an hour I was still only 3 centimeters and they told me if I didn't progress in the next hour they would send me home...and that I was still in early labor. Yah, well these contractions were pretty close together and painful and not the 5-20 minutes apart that the books say is "early labor". I definitely DID NOT want to go home and face this pain and then have to eventually go back to the hospital.

Spent about 45 minutes in the whirlpool tub, came out and I was 4 centimeters ... hooray! I was allowed to stay... However at this point I was rather exhausted and the contractions were still 3-5 minutes apart and I wasnt getting much rest.

10 am I was at 5 centimeters and decided that this labor was going to take a while and that I did not have the energy to deal with the pain for the whole labor. I requested the epidural even though I wished I could have dealt with a natural birth but I knew it wasn't going to work for me.

Epidural was fantastic. I could feel & move my legs although they did feel quite heavy and a bit numb, but it allowed John to sleep and me to get as much rest as possible. However it did slow the labor so I did start receiving low doses of petocin to stimulate the contraction. From then until about 5:00pm I received 2 mili-units per minute, then 3, 5,6, and 9.

2:30 my water broke and continued to leak as the contractions progressed. About 5:30 I was 10 centimeters dialated. At this point I could definitely feel the pressure of the baby moving into the birth canal with each contraction. The nurse said if I wanted to start pushing I could. So we went for it. At first it was like nothing was happening but as we continued I became more focused & pushed a lot harder. Even with the epidural I could feel my pushing and the descent of the baby. By 6:15 they were calling for the doctor to come in and I could definitely tell she was close... 6:23 rolled around and before they could even offer to have me look at her head crowning they told me to look down, and out she came!

We are certainly smitten with her and are enjoying every second of her.