McKenna's Appearance

I tried to leave out all the gory details so hopefully anyone who wants to can read about our little angel's birth and not be too grossed out :) 

McKenna is quite the little trickster. For weeks I've been having small occurrences of false labor that would get my hopes up, only to have my contractions stop completely. Then on Sunday morning I woke up with a bad cold and decided I would stay home from church.  In the morning I had pretty regular contractions about 10 minutes apart and Richard asked me if I thought today would be the day. I told him that now would be the worst possible time to go into labor when I was already feeling sick, so of course this time it was the real thing. McKenna must have a good sense of humor to play a trick like that on her mom. My contractions started getting more frequent and intense but I kept expecting them to stop and I really didn't want to drop Kaylee off at someone's house too early, only to come home from the hospital or, even worse, have her there for a really really long time so I kept telling Richard I didn't want to go to the hospital yet.  Finally, he convinced me that we should probably go when I had been having contractions 3-4 minutes apart for about 1 1/2 hours. Our super nice neighbor came and got Kaylee and we got to the hospital a little before 7 pm. I was only dilated to a 3 and so the nurse said they were going to make me walk around for an hour and if I didn't change at all, they would send me home. We started walking around the hospital and my contractions got super intense and at one point I couldn't even make it more than a few steps without doubling over in pain from another one. After checking me again and seeing that I was at a 4, and with my mom's, sister's and my history of progressing really fast, they whisked me into a labor and delivery room so I could get set up and start my epidural.  Because my labor had progressed so fast, I was shaking uncontrollably, which I think was even worse than the contractions.  But I had definitely felt enough. I know a lot of people are anti-epidural but I am so grateful for them! When my epidural kicked in, I was sitting pretty-I didn't feel another thing all night! The midwife came in and broke my water and said she would be back in an hour to check on me.  When they came back and the midwife went to check on me, she got a surprise and saw her head and said, well I guess it's time to push!  Which is exactly what happened with Kaylee. In fact, they said I probably could've had the baby about an hour before if they would've known that I was progressing that fast but since I didn't tell them about any pressure, they had waited. But I just couldn't feel ANYTHING! (thank you epidural!)  It was really weird- it felt like this was not how labor should be at all.  They had me push on 3 contractions and in between each one we were just chatting and laughing and I couldn't feel anything. So after three pushes, McKenna was here.  We are so grateful that she has joined our little family and can't wait to get to know her better!