So that you guys have this for posterity:
On Thursday Aug 25th, the day before I was to be induced, I got a mani/pedi at 1pm in downtown Glen Ellyn and then walked around Lake Ellyn afterwards for a long while. I fully intended to be induced the next day and had started my leave of absence that day. I came home from my long walk and then Steve's parents arrived. We all went to dinner at Shannon's Pub at 5pm and I started to get contractions at dinner but at the time I thought "these maternity jorts aren't for the post due date phase" and figured it was just pants too tight. ;-) Afterwards we picked up our CSA veggies/fruit (and like every other week we ended up using 1/3 of them - just the super familiar ones - while the others ultimately went bad) and I continued to have contractions but thought it was again, just a too tight waist on the maternity jorts. We got home around 7pm and the pain started to get stronger, longer and more frequent. I thought maybe it was contractions at this point. Steve's parents were helping Tab take a bath. I downloaded a contraction timer app and timed three contractions - the app flashed "STOP AND GO TO THE HOSPITAL!" I went from realizing it was contractions to 20 minutes later the app telling me that I had to go to hospital. He was a little weirded out that I let him know last minute and kept this all a secret, he told his parents we had to go while I panicked. We grabbed our bags and we said goodbye to Tab. Drove into city and checked into hospital around 9pm. At 10pm they checked cervix and said I was far from ready at 5cm or so. We were considering getting a hotel downtown and walking around for a while but my blood pressure started to get too high so they admitted me to delivery. At 12am they brought me upstairs to the delivery room and I asked for an epidural. The midwife wanted to confirm that was what I wanted and said "Do you want me to talk you out of it?" I definitely didn't. After the epidural at 1am or so I felt better but could definitely still feel pain, no one believed me that I still felt pain but I felt better than before and definitely not as much pain from the first baby sans epidural so I just tried to relax and snooze between contractions. They dimmed the lights in our room assuming I would labor slowly for a while and let me and Steve relax. But alas, my water broke probably 20 minutes later. They cleaned me up and I jammed my hands in my vag to check my cervix and I could feel Tilly's hairy head. ;-) I told the nurse that I checked my own cervix and could feel the her head. Sure enough, I was 10cm and I got in trouble for checking my cervix. The midwife was awesome - she had "executive presence" and totally had the situation under control. Steve held one of my legs and the nurse held the other. I pushed once and Tilly's vitals were starting to go down and her heart rate dropped below 90BPM. Tilly's head pushed through a little more and she was face up (posterior) which the midwife said explained why the epidural didn't cut all the pain. She also said she would give me one or two more opportunities to push and then she would do an episiotomy and get Tilly out since the heart rate was too low and she was face up. I started to get worried so I pushed super hard a few times and she popped out at 3:35am! They weighed her with Steve in attendance in the room, yammered about her red hair, sewed me up. Tilly then nursed for TWO HOURS in the delivery room while we tried to stay awake. :-) It was a totally different experience but awesome in its own way.
