Anna woke at 4:00 AM to her first contractions.  This was a bit of a surprise since she had not yet received a dose of pitocin.  Her body finally decided it was time.

The contractions were roughly 2 minutes apart and very strong.  Like holy-shit-that-looks -horribly-horribly-painful-I’ll-just-stand-here-and-be-totally-useless kind of strong.

She is tough.  Very tough.  They gave her some sort of drip to help control the pain.  That did nothing but make her tired.  Not tired enough to sleep through the pain -not even close.

At the start of the night our nurse told us to use a 1 to 10 number scale to describe the pain.  When the contractions got to a “9″ it looked more like a “28″ to me.  I requested the Epidural.  30 minutes later a line was ran below Anna’s spine and she was out cold.

I guess that worked.

Next up: Sleep for 2 hours.  If the contractions slow they will still administer the pitocin.  Regardless, we should be just a few hours away from breaking her water and, eventually, letting Remi out.

The process to induce labor has begun.  So far it’s been a whole lot of sticking things in…well, you know.  The goal, of course, is to soften the cervix to force dilation.  In the morning (around 5:00 AM!) they will use the drug Pitocin to really kick things into gear by forcing contractions to begin.

We just met with the nurse in charge of the Epidural.  She was pretty cool and let us know that Anna will have total control of her Epidural flow via a button to increase the amount of pain killer as needed.

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