She's Here!

Here she is!!! Ashlyn Michelle Bowler, 7lbs 19 inches, born at 10:19am 8/18/09!!!

Labor started for me Monday morning, pains lasted all day, dialted to a 3 until at least 11 pm on Monday night. But from 1pm Monday until 3 am Tuesday morning, I was in such intense pain from the contractions I couldn't move, stand, talk, anything. It was so so intense. The contractions stayed 5 min apart since 1 on Monday. Finally at 2 am they got to 3 min apart and we headed to the hospital for real after another false alarm. I was finally at 4cm and and was certainly in very active labor so they prepped my delivery room at I got my epidural at 4:30. HEAVEN!!! Of course, right when he's putting in the general anisthetic, major major contraction. The worst one I had felt....But it kicked on and felt so so so good. They gave me an extra boost of some narcotic something that made me totally high. The induction was still scheduled for 7:00 am so I was able to sleep finally. Enoch and I had pretty much been up since 6am Monday morning...So we had been up almost 24 hours. The few hours of sleep we got were so nice. At 7:30 people started moving around getting ready to juice me up with some Pitocin. I'm so so so glad I got my epidural first!! Dr Meredith showed up at 8, checked me before he broke my water. I had gone to a 5 in just a few hours but he went ahead with the Pit. At 9:30am I started feeling alot of pressure. I just kept quiet for a few contractions but then I was thinking, wow....um I think we need the nurse. She came in and checked me and SUPRISE! 100% and 10 cm and baby's head was right there! She had me do 2 practice pushes and said WOAH STOP! I have to call Dr. Meredith. He told us when he gave me the Pit that he would be back around noon to check up on things...yeah he really didn't think I would go that fast at all. The nurse had be labor down until about 10 and then called Dr. Meredith. He got there at 10:10 and started prepping everything to get ready and of course he said the same thing the nurse did, WOW baby is RIGHT there! Laboring down made this next part so so easy. I pushed thru 2 counts of 10, one count of 5, took a pause, a 2 second push, and she was out!! That was it!!!!!!!!!! I was stunned. I thought for sure it would be a couple of hours at least. Dr Meredith and the nurse were both just like, um ok...that was really quick....and the other amazing part, I didn't tear at all....The nurse kept saying that I was so lucky and this rarely happens. I'm still shocked how fast the actual delivery went. No joke, 5 min and she was out. She was about as perfect as a newborn can be. She turned pink right away. My mother in law is a NICU nurse and was as shocked as everyone else, especially at how fast she turned pink. She swore she came out half pink. She was screaming before they really got her all the way out so that probably has something to do with it. As soon as she was on my chest, she stopping crying all together and just stared at me.....I was amazed...I could believe it. Enoch looked like he was half in shock, half about to cry and laugh at the same time. She could already lift up her head! When she was laying on my chest on her tummy, up came her head and she stared right at me....and she was a kicking fool, actually pushing herself around under her own leg power. She's very strong and very healthy, chubby cheeks, blue eyes, very long legs and long fingers.

I'll get more pictures up. Things have been a bit crazy the past couple days!