The Birth Story - April 28th/09

On April 14th, my water broke... 2 weeks later, I went into labour. That's probably the most unique part of Simon's birth story.
Trevor and I were watching "How I Met Your Mother" when I started feeling contractions. I chalked it up to Braxton-Hicks and kept going about my day. They didn't let up. They started coming every 20 minutes. I took a shower thinking that this might ease them (or increase them). We went to bed. Trevor got to snooze a bit and my body slowly picked up contractions until I had to wake Trevor.
I did my little labour dances around the house and we packed for the hospital, fed Fergus and left. We drove through the snow storm and arrived at Emergency. We realized that we forgot my prenatal papers so, while I went to admitting, poor Trevor drove back to our house to pick up our papers. There was only one desk clerk and she was busy discussing some guy's gallbladder with him. Our prenatal teacher said that labouring women shouldn't wait but, this lady didn't notice me at all. Fortunately, another nurse came by and looked after me right away. She had an orderly walk me up to Labour/Delivery. I need to emphasize that I walked and I didn't let them wheel me up. I'm pretty proud of that.
When we arrived at Labour/Delivery, the nurse did the meanest thing to me. She made me lay on my back and she did fetal monitoring on Simon. Honestly, laying on my back was torture. All I wanted to do was walk or lean up against something. I had some serious back labour going on and laying on my back wasn't doing much for me. After about an hour of this, she assessed that I was 4 cm dialated and we got our labour room. (We were pretty pumped about this because we got the largest, nicest labour room in our hospital).
I continued labour for a while. I tried the laughing gas. I got really light-headed and nauseous. It wasn't working for me. By 4:30 am, I opted for an Epidural. Thank goodness! The anasthesiolgist was amazing and it wasn't as horrific as I'd expected. After the drugs kicked in, Trevor and I slept for about an hour and half. When the nurse checked again, I was dialated 8 cm. My Mom showed up around this time. It was nice to have her comfort and support me. It didn't take much longer until I was doing my practice pushing and starting labour.
I started pushing hard around 10 am. I think that, had Simon been presenting differently, he would've been out in record time. Unfortunately, Simon was facing sunny-side up (babies should be facing down) and he'd arched his little neck and wiggle his head so much that he was coming out with the largest diameter of his head. My doctor was a little frustrated with him. She let me push and push and push. His heart rate was picking up and we were both running "hot". After an hour and a half, she had to give me an episiotomy. After that little snip, I gave two more pushes and Simon was out. :)
That's the best feeling in the world, to have worked so hard and then have a baby as a reward.

We were able to name him and hug and kiss him and then he was whisked of to NICU. I'll post more on that later...