Birth day! Birth day! Coming to earth day!

Alright, so the details.

As I'm sure we all remember, little Floyd was quite content to rest happily in my uterus, seemingly until the end of time. I was scheduled to head into the hospital late on Sunday, October 25. The plan was to receive several doses of medication through the night to soften my amazing Super Cervix. We'd start Pitocin on Monday morning to get the contractions moving, and out she'd come several hours later.

So Friday (10/23) I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with contractions. They weren't like the most fun thing I've ever experienced, but they were manageable. We timed them for several hours at about 8 minutes apart, and called the doctor's office when they opened just to check in. The nurse suggested I give it several hours and call back, which we did. She decided to have me come into the office to see if anything interesting was happening before the weekend.

It wasn't.

(Remember? Super Cervix.)

Anyway, the contractions sort of died down and we went about our business. Now here's the part where you get to see how I have the coolest doctor in the world. Five o'clock p.m. Friday, generally heralded as the end of the work week, I got a call on my cell phone. From my doctor. Just to check on me. I know. (That's Lucinda Robinson, MD, Avenues Womens Clinic. Seriously.) Anyway, she suggested that we bump up the action 24 hours and head to the hospital Saturday night instead. She couldn't give me the meds for Super Cervix until I was technically 41 weeks along, but since that happened at midnight Saturday, we decided that was the route to go. Hooray!

I waddled all around town Saturday with a spring in my step (or would have if I'd been in any position to spring) and a smile on my face. After an abysmal BYU game experience at the Orton's, we headed to my parents' house to wait out our last hours without a child.

And wham, contrations started.

In case you were wondering, they hurt. A lot.

So anyway, we headed up to the hospital around 10:00 p.m. as planned, and got all settled into our labor and delivery room.

The nurse, Karalee, got me all set up with an IV and a sexy hospital gown, and at midnight she came to give me my first dose. Even though I hurt a lot, we still didn't see any action (Thanks again, Super Cervix.) In went the dose and the waiting began.

Don't be fooled by my smile. It still hurt. The weirdest thing about labor is that between contractions, I still felt 100% fine. Then it was miserable for like 90 seconds, and then back to being fine. It's a very odd roller coaster, really.

So anyway, just before 2:00 a.m., Karalee asked if I want my epidural. And I sajd yes. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Johnson, was very nice, and the epidural didn't really hurt. On the other hand, the contractions that came while I was all hunched over on the edge of the bed while getting the epidural did hurt.

A note about pain management: I am happy to make use of science and medicine to help me feel better. Not everyone goes this route when having a kiddo, but I did, and it was nice. I had to lie on my side for a while to get the epidural to take on both sides of my body evenly, but that was no big deal. For the next several hours, I could still make use of my legs to roll over and readjust myself, so it wasn't inconvenient at all. At no point during the experience did I hate my husband or regret having a baby. Two thumbs up to that plan.

Alright, back to the story. 3:00 a.m. rolled around and it was time for my next sucker punch to ol' Super Cervix. The nurse came in to administer it, and vwalah. Super Cervix had given up the ghost entirely and I was already 4 centimeters dilated. Hip hip hooray. No need for doses number 2 or 3, and we just settled in to wait.

From there, things went faster than I imagined. At 6:30 ish, Karalee said I was a little more than a 7 and warned it would go fast from there. Certainly no need for the Pitocin. We called the parents and told them to start mosying to the hospital. I assumed there would be several hours of pushing to go.

By 7:00 I was fully dilated. I pretty much assumed I was close to that because the contractions started hurting a lot higher up than before, and I had to puke into the kidney basin several times. Sounded like the transition portion of labor to me. I'd heard that's a really adorable part of labor, and it's true. Like a last hoorah to 9 months of nausea, I guess. We pushed through several contractions with Karalee to practice, and then decided to wait for Dr. Robinson since little Floyd-Bug wasn't thrilled about the whole idea and her heart rate showed it.

The doc arrived in fine fashion and we started again with the pushing. Things were A-OK the first few contractions, but then the monitor lost track of her heartbeat. The nurse started moving the monitor all around to search for it. Silence. Dr. Robinson was cool as cucumber, Paddy sported a total poker face, and the nurse kept moving the monitor.

There is no worse sound than silence, I swear.

"Try down by her pubic bone", whispered Dr. Robinson. Silence. Ugh. Awful.

I was panicking inside, but I just kept thinking that if something were really wrong there'd be some sort of hubbub or bustling around. I'm no expert, but I've been in a few hospital emergencies, and there's always a lot of action. Since no one was really moving, I just started praying in my head and hoped for the best.

And of course, everything was fine. A few more contractions and our came our beautiful Bug. I simply don't have words to describe it, so I won't try. Just have a baby, and then you'll know.

The rest of our hospital stay was great. The staff was wonderful (with one notable exception in the lactation specialist, but that's a story for a different day.) Even the food was pretty decent.

Somehow, two days later, we were allowed to take The Bug right out the front doors and home to our very own house.

And we lived happily ever after.