Birth Story - Ella

Birth story details for those interested, if you don't want to know, then stop reading here. :)

So as I had been complaining about on here.....Starting Saturday I was starting to have quite a few contractions throughout the day. Early Sunday morning they were consistently 10 minutes apart and making it so that I couldn't sleep, so around 5:00 AM I called my sister Janille (She lives 4 hours away) so that she could head in. Well, of course, they slowed down and were pretty much stopped by the time she got here but we decided we'd wait and see what happened throughout the day. I was still having contractions but they were random and the pain was bearable in certain positions. This continued throughout the day and into Monday. Although starting on Monday morning around 3:00 they were at every 10 minutes again, but now I was feeling them in my back too so there wasn't really anyway to lessen the intensity. I had a nonstress test and appt Monday morning where I found out I really hadn't made any progress. I went back home to hang out and Janille was trying to decide if she should head home or stay since Sharon was going to come in. Since the contractions were getting stronger Janille decided to stay the night and see what happened from there.
10:00 that night the contractions were coming every 15-20 minutes and I was trying to sleep through them unsucessfully and really wishing I had an epiural at home. :)
Around 2:00 AM, I decided to see if taking a bath would help with the pain and they were now coming every 5 minutes. I stayed in the tub for over an hour timing the contractions and a little after 3:00 decided that it was time to wake Cary up and go to the hospital.
When we got to the hospital I still hadn't dilated past a 2 so they told me they'd monitor me in triage for an hour and if I hadn't made progress in an hour they would send me back home.
Thankfully I passed that test and they moved me to labor and delivery where I got my epidural. The rest of the day was just the usual waiting game and me watching the contractions on the monitor and thanking the good Lord that I couldn't feel any of them.
Around 3:00 in the afternoon, pretty much my body was all ready to go, but Ella's head still wasn't engaged, so Dr E decided to start me on a very small amount of pitocin to see if that would bring her head down. It worked and by 4:15 I was ready to push, but we had to wait for Dr E and the NICU team to get there. (When they broke my water they found out that there was meconium in there so they have to be careful that the baby doesn't breathe it in when they come out) I started pushing around 4:30 and she was out at 4:55 PM. Dr E did give me an episiotomy because Ella's heartrate was dropping and they needed her out quicker. The cord was wrapped around her neck twice so I think that was the reason. Ella did start crying before she got to the NICU team but apparently she didn't breathe anything in since she's okay. :)
So everything went well and I've been quite shocked at how *easy* the recovery has been. I guess I didn't really realize just how traumatic the whole experience with Aidan was, until now.

The End. :-)