The Good News!

He is here! Most of you know, Thursday I went into labor. So for those women who love a good labor run down, here is my day in a nutshell.
I had cramping early Thursday, followed by contractions. I started recording them around 8:00 a.m. I had a few good ones (painful) around 10 a.m.. At that point I decided to head into my doctor for a check. Bill, my father-in-law, took me (and the kids) up to Springfield to the office. I arrived there around 11:30. I was still dilated between a 2 & 3. They hooked me up to monitor the contractions, but were not picking any up. This was confusing to me as I was timing them at 3 & 4 minutes apart, with some fairly strong ones mixed in. I went to Labor & Delivery at the hospital around 1:00 for more monitoring. As soon as I was hooked up to the machine, it was detecting contractions at roughly 3 minutes apart. They went ahead and checked my cervix as well.
I was given tons of water to see if it slowed down the contractions. Apparently, dehydration can cause contractions and I had not ate or drank much that day. I was monitored until about 3:00 and the contractions remained consistent. At 3:00 my cervix was checked and had dilated and thinned a bit more. I would stay another hour for monitoring.
4:00 ish they decided to admit me. I was in my room by 5:00 ish, had my IV, and had my water broken. At 6:00 I took an epidural.
At 9:00 I was a 7. At 9:30 I was a 10 and started pushing. Funny thing is I was facebooking seconds prior to the start of delivery. At 10:08 p.m., Baby Manar was born. He was 8 lbs, 1 oz. and 21 1/4 inches. He was 2 1/2 weeks early. I can't imagine his size if I had went 40 weeks! Will was born 7 lbs, 1 oz. Abbie was 6 lbs, 13 oz.
It was by far the easiest labor I have ever had! The pushing was shortened by between an hour and 2 hours! The entire labor process was shortened by 10-12 hours! YAY!!!!