Yes, I can finally report that my sweet baby girl is finally here. After yearning and dreaming for the last nine months, all my wishes came true, and I held her in my arms for the first time on August 7th at 2:20am. Unbelievable.

The action actually began early Wed morning when we checked into the hospital a litttle after 12am for an induction. The drugs began and the race was off! Most of Wed was pretty easy. Kevin and I were just waiting for my body to warm up and get the labor started. We watched tv and even read! Contractions were mild and every 5 minutes apart so they were easy to handle. Unfortunately, “easy” labor does not equal a baby so they brought in the pitocin to speed things up. And boy did it! By 7pm the contractions had gone from mild/annoying to painful so I called in the big gun and got my first epidural around 8:30pm.

Yup, that’s right, my first epi. That one only lasted about an hour and wasn’t very effective. I kept waiting for the elusive numbing but it never came. Instead, everything got stronger. Now, once you get an epidural you are bed bound because at that point you can’t feel your legs which makes walking a little hard. For me, I found my labor getting harder and harder, and I couldn’t get up and move around to try and easy the pain. Instead, all I could do was stay in the bed and try to cope. Thankfully, we had a wonderful nurse who saw my distress and said, “honey, if you’re going to get an epidural, get the Cadillac version.” And with that she left to find the anesthesialogist. He fiddled with the equipment and up’d my dose but it wasn’t working so around 10:30 pm he took it out and decided to try again.

Now, when that epi was removed, whoa baby! I got a taste of what some real labor pain was like and it was unreal. Thankfully, the epi man moved quickly and this time he hit the nerve right on the head. By 1am, I was a happy happy girl with absolutely no sensation below my belly button. Since I looked so good, the nurse decided to take her break and Kevin decided to take a nap.

You can see this coming, right?

No sooner had the nurse closed the door and Kevin closed his eyes when something really strange happened. Mini-Me did what felt like a crazy dance in my belly and I suddenly felt the need to push. Bad. So at 1:10am after everyone had settled into a break, baby decided to make her move. Our temp nurse checked me and flew into action. I had gone from 5cm to fully dilated and effaced in about two hours. In fact, baby was at +2 station which meant she had fully decended and her head was ready to pop. Only problem was, dad was asleep, nurse was on break, and doctor was at home.

This kid had us moving fast which turned out to be a good thing! We roused Kevin, recalled the nurse, and paged the doctor. Within minutes, everyone was ready and it was time to push. Now, after watching Maternity Ward for the last 9 months, I was ready for the worst. But baby was ready and there was no holding back. Under an hour later, out she came. My 8 lb 8 oz bundle of joy was here! Leina Jane McLaughlin.

So 26 hours, 2 epis, and a ton of pitocin later, our daughter is here.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.