the arrival part 1

Bear with me, I must share the story of Sydney Mae's arrival:

After a long day starting with a walk, dropping Evan off at work (his first day at Amazon, btw), a trip to Lynnwood for Babies R' Us and Target, followed by the baking of pumpkin bread and the beginning of pumpkin cookies, I decided to rest for a bit before heading down to South Lake Union to pick Evan up from work. Just hanging on out the couch I was wrapping up a conversation with Sara when not 10 mins after our convo, at 5:26pm I felt a surge of liquid! And by surge, I mean surge.  Springing from the couch I raced to the bathroom and confirmed, that yep, in fact my water did just break. Doesn't this only happen to 10% of women? Typically the doctor has to break the waters to get the show going. But naturally, I would fall in that 10%.
I immediately called Evan and then proceeded to keep calling, and keep calling him (8 times to be exact), and finally, followed up with a text that said "My water broke, call me!" (mind you, we had the whole "you HAVE to have your phone ON and by your side at all times just in case" conversation) While waiting for him, I called the doctor and my mom, both with the same message, I think my water broke... (as if there really was any question about it). But because I wasn't having contractions, the doctor ordered me to go for a long walk and call her in two hours. In the meantime, Evan was en route (chauffered by his new manager). Once he got home, we hit the sidewalk with Kirby and walked it out. Stopping for a quick bite to eat, the contractions began and we were on our to having a baby! Around 7:30, I called Dr Emanuel to give her an update and she said to make our way into the hospital around 8:40. At this point, the contractions were becoming a bit more regular, so we pulled out the yoga ball and started bouncing (whilst watching Real Housewives of NY, of course).
At 9:00 we checked into the hospital and things started happening. To get my contractions moving along, we walked the halls of the hospital (straight out of a movie). Then at 11:30 we finally measured to see what kind of progress I was making and was at about 4-5 cm. Things continued to progress pretty rapidly from there. by 1:30AM I was 7-8 cm dialated and in need of a nice little epidural. Of course, going into this experience I wanted to keep my options open and see how long I could go without meds, but as I've said a time or two before, no one is winning any awards for going meds free (God bless you women who do it). Thus came the epidural and oh sweet Jesus, sweet relief. By that time, my parents and Dana had made their way to hospital and it was time for all of us to get in a quick nap before push time.