Oh, that's why they call it labor!

Thursday was one of the longest and happiest days of my life. My mom and I went to the hospital at 7:30 a.m. while Joe took Lucas to daycare for a "normal" day. They started my pitocin at about 8. Dr. Grady tried his dandiest to break my water at about 9 but couldn't because my uterus was too high. He came back at noon (I was still 2-3 cm) and broke it. That's when the party really started. I started to have pretty hard contractions and asked for my epidural at 3 but they wanted my blood pressure to be higher (it is typically lower.) They kept pushing fluids and FINALLY about 5 p.m. they came to do it. I was dying!!! As soon as they gave me the epidural my heart rate dropped from 100 to 50 and I really thought I was dying as the nurses, doctor, and two anthesiologists ran in. They kept oohing and ahhing because they'd never seen anything like that. It continued to drop into the low 80s with each contraction. Things really sped up after my epidural and at 11:00 p.m. they said I was ready to start pushing. I pushed from 11:15 to 12:26 when my beautiful baby girl arrived! They said had she been an ounce bigger it would have ended in a C-section again. The nurses were so postive and up-beat but afterwards told me they had been taking bets on what time my C-section would be! It was definetly the hardest thing I've ever done! I'm so glad she's here!