She is here!

Ann Rainey Gould was born yesterday morning at 10:55am.
She was 7lb 6oz and 19 3/4 inches long. 

Last Friday we had our last weekly checkup and we set an induction date for the day after her due date(11/18/14) Wednesday, November 19th. I told Johnathan after the appointment that now that we had a date set, she wasn't going to wait for it. I just had a feeling that she was going to be a bit hard headed and independent. ;-)
My water "broke" yesterday morning between 3 and 4. I say "broke" because it definitely was not at all dramatic like some people or movies make it out to be. Honestly, I didn't even know it had really broken. I just thought the slow leak I was experiencing had turned into a faster leak. I knew JP's alarm for work would be going off at 4am, so I decided to let him continue sleeping and just monitor my contractions. Before 3, they had been spread out so far it wasn't worth tracking and then they became a steady 10-12 minutes. When he woke up, my contractions were 5-6 minutes apart. I told him that he wasn't going to be going to work and that we would be having a baby today. We got up and moving around. I was determined to take a shower before heading to the hospital. By the time I got out of the shower and we were on our way to the hospital they had dropped to 2-4 minutes apart. Since it was so early, I had several hours of long, close (and very painful) contractions until the anesthesiologist got there for my epidural. I'll be honest, that waiting period was the worst part of my labor. At one point, I told JP "I can't do this!" Haha
Once I got my epidural, I went from 3 to 8 centimeters dialated in 45 minutes and we had our sweet girl in our arms shortly afterwards. We were completely blessed and thankful for such a smooth and natural pregnancy and birth!! I am so glad she decided to come on her own rather than waiting 48 hours to be induced.
We are completely smitten with our sweet girl. Actually, I think smitten is an understatement. I don't think that there is or ever will be an adequate way to verbally describe the way your heart immediately grows and changes when your child is born. After carrying her for 40 weeks and steadily falling in love with a face you have yet to see, you don't think you could love her any more. But you're wrong. Very, very wrong. And you will never be more glad to be wrong. :-)