She's Arrived!!!

So, on Wednesday, I had been having a pretty typical day. I got up around 9:00, got dressed, took Gir for a walk, did various household chores, watched t.v., etc. All day I had been getting minor cramps that were pretty random and far between. I had been expecting these since I had had my membranes scraped the day before and I was told that the cramping was a side effect. I didn't think anything of them. After Chris got home from work, we made dinner and enjoyed some of our favorite tv shows. During dinner my "cramps" started getting worse and Chris remarked that maybe my cramps were actually contractions. I then started getting contractions more and more frequently and by 10:00pm they were getting to be about 10 minutes apart and fairly painful. Chris and my Dad gave me a blessing at around 11:30pm and by midnight we were in the car on our way to the hospital. When we got to the hospital we were admitted and I had dilated to about 4 centimeters. I decided that i'd wait a little longer before I get my epidural since I could still handle the contractions ok. By the time that I had gotten to about 6 centimeters dilated, I decided that I was very ready for the epidural. I was surprised how much the epidural hurt but once it was in, it was nice to not feel the contractions. About 3 hours later, I had dilated to a 10 and I started pushing. I pushed a couple of times but whenever I pushed her heart rate would plummet which made the nurse nervous, so we just waited through the contractions until the doctor arrived. It turns out that the reason why her heart rate dropped was because the cord was wrapped around her head twice and every time the contraction would come, the cord would be caught. Once the doctor arrived I got a booster to my epidural and I finished pushing and out she came. Alex was born at 6:20am, she weighs 6lbs 0 oz, she is 20 in long and has a bunch of brown hair! She is absolutely beautiful and we are so happy to have her in our little family. So far, Alex is eating well and being a champ!