For Ashley

Here is Lily's birth story: part of it you know since you were there:
It all started with my baby shower. I had always said once I had my baby shower that Lily could come. Little did I know she was going to take me seriously. My shower was on a thursday night and my sister came from northern california for it. My mother in law sister in law and some other family members came from bakersfield. It was fun and crazy and in the end I came home with tons of stuff, but no newborn or preemie clothes. (didn't think I needed them since both seth and i were eight pound babies)

The next morning I woke up and my contractions were different, I could tell these were real and they were steady. I called seth (who worked 30 minutes away) and told him I was heading to the hospital. At the hospital they told me she was in position and I was 70 percent thinned but not at all dilated. The nurse said that it could be 2 weeks or a couple of hours, but then we I left I heard her telling another nurse she thought she'd see me sooner than later.
At this point I had nothing ready in Lily's room. I had only gotten her car seat the day before and of course it wasn't installed because seth had the car and I had the truck. So I went home and washed all of Lily's clothes, bought newborn diapers, set up the diaper champ etc etc... contractions kept coming but they weren't very hard. Somehow I just knew she was coming.
I called seth and told him I thought i'd go into labor that night. He didn't believe me. I called my mom (who was on the way to a family reunion) and told her to turn around. She didn't believe me. That night I loaded the car seat into the car (since seth was tired and didn't believe me he just wanted to wait) I made sure I had everything ready and finally went to sleep around 10 with seth.(I'll leave out one part for the sake of all of you)
I woke up around 2:40 because I could feel stronger contractions. I planned on waiting them out on the couch, so I settled in and turned on the tv and waited. Within 5 minutes i felt my water start to break and ran to the bathroom where it continued to break. I ran to tell seth. It took me saying his name half a dozen times before he woke up which is weird because he is a light sleeper (he now says it was the best night of sleep he had ever gotten until I woke him up)
We got to the hospital at around 3:15. The night nurses were chatting away as I stumbled in with contractions only about 2 minutes apart. They didn't even offer help. They took forever to get me in my room and check me and when they did the nurse said "hun I don't think your water broke, you just peed yourself". I told her to go check my bathroom floor, it wasn't pee. She even checked my fluid before she would believe me. She was so rude. Then she told me I was only at a one and I wanted to kill her. So I labored for awhile and then asked for pain killers. They started me on IVs first, because apparently august 11th was a popular day to give birth. 5 other women were already in line before me for an epidural. Both IV meds they gave me made me vomit and shake vilently, but barely touched the pain. Finally around 6 in the morning I got my epidural and got to rest for awhile.
Then the epidural started wearing off on my left side. They added more but nothing helped. I was back in some pain but not as bad as before. I was dilating at a rate of 1 to 2 cms an hour.
I had a fever that kept increasing with time so I was put on an antibiotic through IV. Lily's heart rate kept racing with each contraction, so they put a monitor on her head. (in the end she had the cord wrapped around her neck 3 times... guess i shouldn't have boogy boarded the week before.. oops)
At 12:15 I started pushing. I remember we were watching the story about the miners being trapped in a mine in utah and they were waiting to talk to a spokesman about it. Someone stated that we would have Lily out before the miners were out or something on the sort. They were right but only because they never got those miners out.
My epidural ran out completely before lily was born 3 hours and 29 minutes later. She weighed 6 pound 5 ounces and was 18 and a half inches long.
She had a slight fever and I still had a high fever. So the nurses decided to check on us every hour through the night. That night was horrible. The Philippino Nazis (as they were nicknamed by the day nurses) told seth than if we didn't feed Lily every 1-2 hours she would be brain damage. So between that and getting checked on every hour we didn't sleep at all. Luckily they let us go the next night instead of keeping us for an extra day as was planned. We left healthy and happy the next afternoon.