Annie Kathleen Pahulu

Well, we are officially a family of four!! On Sunday, Annie decided to make her dramatic entrance into the world. I woke up at about 8 am having a contraction and bleeding a little. We monitored the contractions for a while and they were pretty irregular and not too intense but the nurse at the hospital told us we should come in so they could make sure the bleeding wasn't from anything going wrong. They monitored me for about 2.5 hours and my contractions stayed about 10 minutes apart and I didn't change from where I was when I came in (dilated to a 4, 90% effaced). So, they decided I was in the early stages of labor but that we should go home and when the contractions were closer together and more intense we should come back.
So, we drove home and put Lauryn down for a nap and tried to get a little sleep ourselves. My contractions stayed about 8-10 minutes apart for a while but then suddenly started to pick up and became 3-5 minutes. But we really wanted to make sure this was it and not go back to the hospital if it wasn't so we timed them for about 30-45 minutes. On the way back to the hospital the contractions were really bad and I could totally feel that she was coming. I told Paul we needed to hurry and then called my brother to see if he could meet us at the hospital because we didn't have time to drop Lauryn off at his house. So Paul starts speeding as fast as he can to the hospital and I was trying to hold her in as my contractions were coming every 1-2 minutes. About a mile from the hospital a cop pulled behind us and started his lights but Paul just kept driving. He pulled up to the front door and I jumped out and made it up to labor and delivery thanks to the nice lady in the lobby who could tell I wasn't going to make it on my own. Paul explained to the cop that I was having a baby and then parked the car and he and Lauryn rushed upstairs.
When I got to labor and delivery I was basically crawling in because I was contracting so hard and trying so hard not to push. They grabbed me and put me in the first triage room. Literally 10 minutes later Annie was born. Paul barely made it into the room and Lauryn was out in the waiting room with one of the nurses. I was still wearing the t-shirt and even the socks that I'd come in (kept the t-shirt, threw the socks away). Needless to say, no epidural for me even though I still tried to get one. Having gone both ways, I must admit that I prefer a painfree labor! Here's the crazy part, we left the hospital to come home from the first time at about 2:30 and Annie was born at 5:33. So, yeah we should have just stayed the first time. The doctor and the nurse that sent us home kept apologizing. But I can't really blame them and now we'll be prepared for next time.
Thankfully she was a bit smaller than Lauryn and was only 7 lbs 15 oz, 20 inches long. It helped that she was 9 days early! She is really healthy and perfect. She's catching on to nursing pretty well and we're just happy to be home all together. My recovery has actually gone really well and I feel pretty good. I'll post some pictures when I get a chance to get them off the camera.