Adventures of Atticus' First Year: Happy Birthday Atticus!

It seems only right that the first post about Atticus' first year, should start with the day he was born, so it is the same as the last post when we were waiting for him to arrive...

So here's the story of our last couple days before meeting Atticus...... Last Thursday, I got a call from the doctor's office. Even though the doctor I saw on Tuesday wasn't concerned about my AFI values, when my doctor saw the results, he wanted me to come in for some follow up testing. So I talked to his nurse and arranged to come in Friday morning when the office opened to have some labs collected, then I was going to go to work afterwards. I was looking forward to sleeping in in the morning. Throughout the night, I was having some contractions, however it didn't seem any different than any other night during that week. I had a hard time falling back asleep after about 2:30. I got up in the morning and took a shower to get ready for work, then was going to rest on the couch until I had to leave for the doctor's office. I started having some contractions while I was in the shower, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary from what I had previously experienced. Ron came home from work, I talked to him for a little bit, then went to lay down on the couch to wait until I should leave to go to the doctor's office. By the time I should have been leaving, I was having what felt like pretty strong contractions that were about 10 minutes apart. This was about the time that I realized that I didn't think I'd be going to work at all....except maybe to go to Labor and Delivery. Ron had only been asleep for about an hour, so I didn't want to wake him up until I was sure what was going on. At about 9:00, my contractions were between 4-6 minutes apart... they all took my breath away. I was starting to get really scared. When I had one that dropped me to my knees, I went to tell Ron that I thought we might have to be going to the hospital soon. Poor guy had only been asleep about 2-2 1/2 hours by this time. I laid down on the bed with him to see if I could relax and feel any better. Surprisingly, by about 9:45, it felt like the contractions had stopped. So I got up and went and walked around the block a couple of times to see if they came back or not. I started having a couple more, not as painful or as frequent. When I came back in the house, they started back up pretty strong. By the time Ron woke up, after only about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, the contractions were again 4-6 minutes apart and felt pretty strong. I told him I think we need to go to the hospital. So we left.
By the time we got to the hospital, the contractions were about 3 minutes apart. We got to L&D and they put us in a room. When the nurse did an exam, she said I was dilated to 5cm and was 100% effaced. She said we wouldn't be going home that day....we'd be having a baby. Within 30 minutes she had gotten an anesthesiologist to start an epidural....it was wonderful! I was now barely able to notice that I was having contractions that were measuring twice as strong as the ones I was having that were previously taking my breath away. At about 3pm, I was measuring 7-8cm....everyone thought Atticus would be here by dinner time. Except for Dr. Jasper who said he thought we'd have a baby by 8, but definitely by midnight. Ron says he jinxed us with that comment!!!
At 10:30pm, the nurse came in and said we were going to start pushing with the next contractions. Finally after 3 hours of pushing (it is way past midnight) Atticus made his entrance!