life in the "nutt" house: the rest of the story...

So, littlest peanut is with us now and we are creating a new normal. A few things I am thankful for: my parents here to help (meaning do EVERYTHING except maybe feed the baby), my Drew back to his normal self (sigh of relief), b-e-a-utiful weather!!, and the smell of baby. Nothing smells better than baby. Oh how I love newborns.
To fill in a few of the details that fit between labor at Walmart and "ta-da" meet Lily, here's the rest of the story. I will try to keep the gag count down by skipping the gory ones. I'd had my last scheduled doc apt that morning and though it seemed like things were pretty much ready to go, we made an appointment to be induced in a week (my due date) if nothing had happened before that. I really don't like the new doc at the practice and he was going to be on-call all weekend, so I'd joked with my fav doctor (who I saw for my apt that day) that'd I'd be driving the bumpy route home to get things going.
I don't know if there is a bumpy route home, but I didn't take it. I did however go to Walmart and I should've known the stress of that place would be enough to induce labor. I'd had contractions for a few weeks by then but never consistent, so I wasn't really paying attention until I realized that I couldn't think of an isle where I hadn't had one. I decided to pick up a few more things for the house "just in case," but I was still skeptical. We headed home and the boys got some movie time while I went into cleaning mode. Again, "just in case." - a clean house couldn't hurt. I also told Brandon to wrap things up at work "just in case." I was supposed to call the doc when contractions were like 10 min apart for an hour, but that would mean I'd have had to pay attention to the timing of them. After a couple of hours of Brandon saying, you should probably call the doctor, I finally watched the clock for a bit and decided I should've called a couple of hours ago- but 10 minutes apart seems like days away from labor. We got the kids dropped off and settled with our amazing friends, who not only offered to watch them (taking time off of work to do so!), but made it a giant, fun movie night/sleepover in their family room. - I was jealous I couldn't stay for it! A big, fat answer to prayer was that from the moment I slid in the news to Andrew at Walmart that this might be the day his sis would come, he switched from anxious & clingy to excited & asking, "Are you ready yet?" every 2 minutes. I should've timed my contractions according to them.
We got to the hospital around 8ish maybe and they started me on some antibiotics. I was already dialated pretty far when we arrived so they decided to give me my epidural before breaking my water just in case things went really fast after that. Things did not. My epidural was around midnight, the water break was around 1:30 (she got tied up delivering another baby in between) and then I stalled out. I ended up getting some pitocin, and then some more pitocin, and then I got reeeeally sleepy so I dozed for like a half hour. I woke around 4am, feeling like I needed to push and what seemed like moments later I pushed twice and out was Lily! It was so bizarre - going from napping to newborn. My brain and emotions took a while to catch up, but I'm definitely not complaining. Our sweet pea had arrived and she was perfect!
Aside from a totally ghetto first recovery room (which I will not go into because it still puts me in a bad mood), the rest of our hospital visit went well, we had lots of wonderful visitors, and we are now a family of FIVE. That still sounds ridiculous, but I like it. I am one happy girl. Ok, now onto 1,000 photos....