Paige's arrival

On Monday, April 20th we arrived at the hospital around 7:00pm just to check if I was leaking amniotic fluid or not. We were doubtful, but decided to play it safe. We thought we would be returning home that evening.

To our pleasant surprise, Paige had decided that she wanted to get this going and come out early. We were admitted into the hospital and taken to the Labor and Delivery room. The doctor's started the pitocin around 10:30pm to get the contractions going and by midnight they had really started strong.

Grammy and Grumpy showed up around 11:00pm. It was so neat watching Paige's heartbeat and my contractions on the monitor the whole time. The contractions weren't too bad until around 4am and were pretty horrible until around 7:30am, when I decided to finally get the epidural (the decision was easy to make after those strong contractions began).

After that, labor was SO much easier. At noon the nurse said we would probably be starting delivery around 2:00pm, but we didn't get started until about 2:45. Nurse Laurie and Doctor Wells told us what to do, and I began pushing and Adam coached me along. Only a few sets of pushes (less than a dozen), and at 3:03pm, Paige Felicity Howard was born, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and measuring 19 inches in length.