yea!!!! the epidural worked!!!!! oh, and the baby is here!

On August 26th, Selene Allison Freestone was born at 6:19 am. Labor started at 3:00 am on August 25th. . . after that I couldn't go back to sleep. . . .Sent my husband to work at 10:00 am, and I got onto a conference call from home. during the conference call, I muted the phone and called my doctors office to see at what point should go to the hospital. . . they told me if the contractions were more than 5 per hour, then I should go to the hospital to get checked out. . .. at this point, I was having between 10 and 12 an hour. . . .I texted my husband and told him he better head home, so that we could go to the hospital.... We got to the hospital about 11:30 am. they checked me and I was only 2 cm dialated. . . for the next two hours, they monitored me and I only got to a 3. . . they sent me home with some percocit to try and relieve some of the pain of the contractions so that I could sleep . . . . percocit doesn't help me a whole lot as a pain killer. . .I slept between contractions and at 7:00 pm that night, the contractions were becoming unbearable. . . . so we headed back to the hospital. after about two hours of sitting in triage, they finally had a labor and delivery room cleaned up . . . I immediately asked for an epidural and the anestition nurse did a great job of getting it in. the IV hurt more going in than the epidural. the epidural was working within two minutes. and it worked great. the doctor came in later to break my water and that wasn't hard, it was a lot lower than they expected. a bit later ( I kept falling asleep, so I don't know how much time had passed. ..) the nurse came in and we started to push . . I was afraid they would turn off the epidural or not let me have a refill if needed, so I pushed as hard as I could. . . . . I pushed for 3 1/2 hours. .. . ends up one of my bones should have been rounded, and it was more flat, so the baby wasn't really moving down very well. .. . . the doctor finally came and they were debating weather or not to do a c-section or use forceps . . . .they were worried about the tearing with the forceps. .. . they decided to try the forceps . . . they went in with no difficulty, but they did cause some tearing . . . . with the forceps in place. I pushed three times and the baby was out. they took the baby and cleaned her up a little bit. She made a little bit of noise as they were cleaning out her mouth and nose, but after that she quieted right down. . . she's been that quiet and calm ever since. I was able to hold the baby while they were stitching me up, unfortunately that took 1 1/2 hours . . .the tears were difficult to get to.

Selene sleeps for 6 hours straight at night. . and has since the day we brought her home. She is a very content baby and very cute. . she has a lot of hair . . .I had a good amount of hair when I was born, but nothing like this. She was born 7 lbs 12 ounces, 19 inches long. within 7 days of having her, the majority of the pain is gone, and I think I am healing well. We aren't really sure who selene looks like . . . I guess there is one picture of her that she really looks like Matt, but I am not sure which one it is. . .she doesn't really look a whole lot like me. She is a lot of fun and I am so happy that she is so good and so healthy.