The day has finally come!

Sorry, lots of posts right in a row, but he's sleeping good right now so I gotta get it done while I can!

Seriously? In all my research, all my reading and in my big brain of knowledge, I didn't know what I was supposed to do when my water broke! Perfect! So, I call the one person I ask all my stupid questions to. Tahnee: (sleepy, cause it's 11:00pm) Hello?! Me: "Hi, um, my water just broke." Tahnee: "seriously? (why does everyone think I'm joking!) Me: "yeah, so what do I do? do I go to the hospital? do I wait for my contractions to start coming regularly and hurting?" Tahnee: "Um.....no, I would just go to the hospital."
Despite my mother's nagging for weeks to pack a hospital bag, I hadn't done it. Now, I rush to put whatever I think I might absolutely NEED that night. We grab my bag, a changing pad for the seat in the car, and head to the hospital.
EIRMC is only like 10 minutes from our house, but Chad is driving like he can see the head and we live hours away! I started timing my contractions in the car and telling Chad that we didn't need to hurry that fast until my contractions got close together. Ha, they were 4 min. apart the whole way there. I waddle my wet butt through the emergency room doors, down the long maze of hallways and finally to L&D clear at the other end of the hospital. They got us into a room right away. I thought I was going to be tough and hold out on the epidural until I was in real pain. We checked in at 11:20ish pm. I was calling for my epidural by 2:30am. Chad and I tried to get some sleep after Chad makes all the necessary calls.
Everything went well. I wasn't feeling a thing. I was sick to my stomach, had the shakes really bad (which happens with the epidural) and was having a hard time breathing but other than that, I was great. I was going to meet my son that I had worked so hard for!
Dr. Merril was on call. She walks in the room in capri's, a t-shirt and tennis shoes. Looked like I had interrupted her Saturday gardening. She puts on the gown and gloves, and does her job. 3 contractions later and there he was! My beautiful blue son! Wait, blue? Yep, totally blue, I'm talkin whole body blue, but he was just  fine! Perfect in fact. He remained un-named for about 8-9 hours. Finally around 11:30pm we decided he looked like a Ryker. So after much anticipation we welcomed Ryker Sledge Young to the world ~ Aug. 6th, 2011 @ 1:50pm 7lbs. 10 oz. 20.5 in. long.