An Ode to the Epidural

For those of you who love labor stories, here is mine (for the squeamish, I omitted all gory details). I started feeling like I was in labor around 9:00 Thursday night. I told Andy, and we decided to try to sleep for as long as possible. At 12:00 am I woke up with some pretty intense contractions. They were painful and only a couple of minutes apart. I wanted to try to stay at home longer, but I also didn't know how quickly the pain would increase so we got ready to go.

We got to the hospital at 1:30 am. A nurse started going through the laundry list of things to check us in. Although I wasn't very far along in labor, the contractions continued to get stronger and closer together so I got an epidural around 3:30 am. All I can say is I LOVE the epidural. The anesthesiologist gave me a little booster with the epidural so the pain relief was immediate! I cannot tell you how great that was. With no pain left to worry about, and knowing we still had quite a long way to go, Andy and I got to sleep off and on until 7:00 am in the hospital room.

Everything continued to progress and at 10:50 am I was ready to push. The nurse said that the average pushing time for a first time mom with an epidural is 1-3 hours. That seemed like a daunting task, but I was ready for it (again, gotta love that epidural!). Most of the time that I pushed it was just Andy, the nurse, and me in the room. It was a really relaxed atmosphere, and Andy and the nurse were great cheerleaders. The epidural was perfect because although I wasn't in any pain, I could feel just enough to know when I was having contractions so I could know when to push. Almost 2 hours later, little Joey popped out. I say "little," but he certainly didn't seem that little right when he was born. The nurse and doctor both exclaimed what a big baby he was to have just come out of me.