I started contractions Saturday afternoon (Jan 9), with them progressively getting stronger throughout the day. At 7pm they were 5 minutes apart and close to a minute in length...so now it was just a waiting game to make sure they were going to stay that way for long enough to call the doctor and think about going to the hospital. We called the doctor around 7:30 to get his thoughts, and decided to stick it out at home for a bit longer. At 8:30 the contractions were still continuing to get stronger and we were pretty sure this was the real thing!
We went to the hospital, arriving around 9:30pm - and were officially admitted by around 10:30. I'll spare all the dilation and effacement stats (for all the men out there), but things were progressing fairly quick. I was given some pain medication, followed by an epidural which kicked in about midnight. My doctor came in to the hospital to check on me and was there through the epidural, and then left for the early morning hours while I continued through the various stages of labor. Ben and I attempted to sleep at that point, which was only mildly successful - but at least we had a chance to at least rest. The epidural was great - I felt no contractions, yet things were continuing to progress quicker than even the nurses seemed to expect. At around 4am, my contractions stalled a bit, so I was given pitocin to help speed thing up again. Things started moving along nicely, except that I started to gradually feel the contractions again. It seems that my epidural was leaking a bit, which Ben discovered when he realized my back was all wet at one of the connections. By the time we realized it, it was basically too late to really do anything about it. The good news was that I had several hours of pain free labor, the bad news was that I still had the worst of the contractions and of course the actual birth to get through! I managed to get through them though with a very suppotive husband by my side! I pushed for around 35 minutes, starting around 6:50am, and at 7:25 our little Berkley was handed to me for the first time!
Ben cut the cord and got to watch her vitals and measurements being taken, and of course her cute little fooprints!
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