Birth Story - Part 2

We got to the hospital around 9:15 and checked in. Of course we had to wait for atleast 30 minutes before we were brought back to a labor and delivery room. Once checked in, the nurse had to verify that my water indeed broke. Once verified, the doctor immediately ordered me to be hooked up to pitocin since I was not dilated nor effaced. I was checked every few hours  and the pitocin was upped everytime I was checked because I was making zero progress. Around 4:00 the doctor made the decision to go ahead and take me off the pitocin and let me eat (thank goodness, I was starving) and at 7:00 start me on a pill that is to ripen the cervix. I was to take this pill every four hours and come morning begin the pitocin again. Around 11:00pm I was checked again and thank the Lord I was dilated. The nurses suggested that I take an ambien so that I could get some rest before the big debut. At 2:00am I awoke from me coughing and choking on god knows what. After that point I started to really feel my contractions. I knew that the nurses were going to be coming back in around 3:00am to give me another pill, so I just waited around for an hour until they came back in. I have no clue why I did not call them into the room, but I decided to see how much pain I could tolerate. When they finally came in the room I was standing next to my bed with contractions coming on very strong. When I was checked I was making huge progress and had dilated to a 5. The pain was getting more intense and I had to make the decision if I wanted the anesthesiologist called to give me an epidural. For some odd reason I could not make a decision between getting the epidural or just taking pain medicine. Ben finally talked me into getting the epidural, which I am glad he did because it allowed me to get some rest. By the time I received the epidural it had been 25 hours since my water broke. Surprisingly I was not scared to get the epidural, which surprised me because I am terrified of needles (for the record the 3x I was stuck trying to put my IV in was way worse).  The epidural knocked me out for 3 hours until 6:00am when the crowds started to roll in.