Labor and Birth

After 12 hours on the cytotex I had not made any real progress with my labor. Contractions had become less painful and although I was walking around keeping active I knew if they wanted to deliver this baby and not let me go home then I would need to take something else.
I expressed my feelings to the nurse and asked if I could have my water broken, she checked my cervix and said she would ask the doctor but she highly doubted the doctor would. She said they would continue with the cytotex. I don't know if it was the sleep deprivation, the fact I wanted to be home and not in the hospital, or well being pregnant, but I had a melt down. I cried and could not be consoled at all because I felt like a failure because this was not at all what I had wanted. The nurses came in and talked to me and she apologized for upsetting me; which I then explained it was not her fault but I just didn't feel this was working and that I needed to talk to the doctor (hadn't seen the doctor since 8:30am that morning and it was 5pm that night).
The funny thing was that not 10 min later the doctor did walk in and both Curtis and I expressed our feelings on how this was going. We had both hoped that after we talked to the doctor she would let us go home and wait it out. She was very nice and said she couldn't do that because of my heart (which I had expected). She then gave us other options to choose from...stick with cytotex (but her concern was that the baby had actually disengaged making the cytotex les effective), break my water (but she felt again because the baby had disengaged breaking my water my create more of a risk), pitocin at 9pm on Aug 2nd (but body would be getting a one-two hit from the cytotex and the pitocin), or rest and sleep for the night then start pitocin in the morning. Curtis and I talked about it and decided to go ahead and start the pitocin that night(Aug 2nd) after a nice shower.
That night they started the pitocin (10pm) and although I had hoped to go into labor by myself I knew that was not an option and pitocin was the way to go. I was able to sleep till about 4am when the contractions became too much to sleep through. By 6am the contractions were every minute and I could hardly catch my breathe before another came. At 6:30am I decided I was done and needed the epidural. The anesthesiologist however was in a c-section with my doctor and was not able to get to me till 7:15am.
At 7:15am the doctor checked me and I was dilated to 5 cm (which broke my heart)and the anesthesiologist began his first attempt to place the epidural. On the THRID attempt he was able to place the epidural (7:30am). I began getting relief after 5 min and 5 VERY long contractions. By 8am I told the doctor I was feeling pressure and I knew I was going to need to push soon, She checked me and I was 7 cm. I then told her I need to push(8:10am) she checked me and said I was fully dilated and started to get ready.
By 8:15am I began pushing and after one push I remembered how to do it. It was such a different experience to when I had Kaleigh! I felt much more connected to the whole pushing experience and the birth. At 8:20am Curtis pulled Lillian the rest of the way out and put her onto my chest(he never thought that would be something he would want to do but loved doing it)! He even forgot to tell me a boy or girl(I had to ask)! It was a girl!!!! I saw her and I knew she would be Lillian Kate Beckemeyer.

Another difference I loved about this experience was the fact I was able to hold her for about 30 min before they did any test or anything (Curtis was getting a bit jealous). I liked the less "factory" like experience!