She's Here!! Labor and Delivery

Nicole Marie arrived on 18 March at 8:18am!! I know I was supposed to be prepared to go any day, but I've always heard people say they had a "feeling" the day they went into labor. This was definitely not the case with me. On Wednesday, I left work a little early because I had some stuff I needed to take care off. I went home and started working on stuff in the nursery. I put together a shelf (which was a lot harder than it should of been since I was soo pregnant). I was having contractions, but I figured it was because I was doing too much, so I figured I would just take it easy when I was done. Then at 6, the contractions got more regular. I tried lying down and resting, but that didn't seem to make them stop. Shaun got home late at 8 that night and that is when they started getting more painful. I thought I would just go to bed. That didn't work because I couldn't lay in bed. I started checking all my books to see what they said about when to go to the hospital and how to ease the pain. At 11pm, I woke Shaun up and told him it was time to go. We rushed and packed my hospital bag (I know I was supposed to have this done weeks before). We arrived at the hospital around midnight. They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me out. While they were checking me, I had a contraction that dilated me from a 3 to a 5, so they admitted me. At that point, I started getting anxious because I realized it was really getting ready to happen. I decided to have an epidural, which I got around 3 am, when I was dilated to an 8. Then the labor slowed down dramatically. It took me the next 3 hrs to get to a 9. The nurses recommended using this time to get some rest. I was able to sleep for about an hour. Then around 7, they came and asked me how I felt about speeding up the labor. We decided to have them break my water and see if that helped get the contractions going again. It helped a little, but by 7:30, they started pitocin and reduced my epidural, so we could get things moving. By 8:18, she was here. We were able to hold her right away and Shaun cut her cord. They checked her out and said everything looked great! She was still pretty small - 5lb 12oz and 17 3/4 in. We stayed in the hospital for 48 hrs. I couldn't wait to get home. It definitely has been an adjustment for us. She really is wonderful, but we need to work on establishing some sort of routine for her. I go back to work at the beginning of May. I'm not really looking forward to that, but the next few weeks will be nice to be at home with her.