It was a dark and stormy night . . .

**Warning, excessively long post ahead. I knew that I would only type out the birth story once, so I wanted to get as many details down as I could so that as I forget over time I have something to look back to. **

. . . on Thursday, July 23 when I first started timing my contractions around 10pm. I fell asleep through them for a while then awoke at 2am unable to ignore them any longer. They were lasting about a minute each and by the time Greg's alarm went off at 6 they were about 6 minutes apart. I was sure that we would be heading to the hospital that morning and that Zach would follow in his dad's footsteps of being born on his due date (which was July 24th). We got up and took showers, packed up the car, and did some other general clean up and, wouldn't you know, my contractions came to a screeching halt. Very disappointing. We still had a little time before Greg needed to leave for work, so we drove to a nearby mall and did some power walking with the senior citizens hoping that my contractions would start up again. Nope. Greg went on to work and a very sad me came back home to take a much needed nap. (I never fell back asleep after 2).

That afternoon I called my youngest sister up and we eventually headed off to another mall with Mom to get some more power walking in. That seemed to do the trick and by dinner time the contractions were coming again, albeit pretty far apart. Assuming that I would follow the pattern of the morning and the contractions would slow to a stop, Greg and I headed off to his softball game. It was a great game (though they didn't win) and Greg even had a very exciting play where he slid into home. I was trying my best to cheer but the contractions were coming about 5 minutes apart by this point =)

By the time we got home, the contractions were about 3 and 1/2 minutes apart, so we called the Dr and headed on to the hospital. From this point on I'll use a timeline:

11 - arrived at the hospital and was told by the dr that there was no change from my progress at my weekly appointment 5 days prior (1 cm, 50% effaced), again pretty disappointing. They put me on an IV drug to "take the edge off" and help me sleep for a little while. My dr. said then when I awoke either the contractions would have stopped and I could go home or my body would have relaxed and started to progress.
2 - woke up as the drugs wore off, still hadn't progressed enough for the dr to let me stay. The nurse came in to help me get ready to go home. Apparently Zach just needed a little pressure of a deadline because right then my water broke! They let me have my epidural (a little gift from heaven . . .) and started me on pitocin because my progress was still very slow and Zach needed to come soon since my water had broken.

7:30-8ish - at 7 cm . . . kind of wondering how much longer this would take . . . thankfully I was able to cat nap during the majority of this time. My mom had arrived at the hospital around 6:30 (I think that's right) and got some breakfast for Greg. She was waiting in the waiting room, but just knowing that she was in the hospital was very comforting.

9 - all sorts of pain woke me up and I just knew that I had to push. I'm not sure if the epidural stopped working completely or what, but I could just tell that something was different. Sure enough, I had progressed to 10cm in the past hour and it was time for Zach to come! They set the room up for the delivery while I screamed with every contraction. I told Greg and my nurse that, yes, I realized I probably didn't need to be that dramatic, but it sure it help the pain . . . Greg's a lucky man =) They finally let me start pushing and after 30 minutes (9:43am to be exact) Zachary Thomas Ross entered the world and I couldn't believe how beautiful he was.

The rest of our time at the hospital was very relaxing . . . we really wish we could have taken a couple of our outstanding nurses home with us. We were visited by many friends and family and also enjoyed the time we had just the 3 of us: napping, eating (there was a refreshment room right down the hall from us stocked with ice cream, juice, and other snacks that we could help ourselves to as often as we wanted . . .) and watching season 1 of Lost.I really couldn't have asked for a better delivery experience. I told Greg that if I could skip over the pregnancy part and just do the labor and delivery portion, we'd have 10 kids, no problem. I remember laughing when I heard that a friend said she absolutely loved the whole delivery process, but now having gone through it, I totally agree.