With my first (seven years ago) I was induced at 37 weeks for medical reasons. Now for my second I was given the option. Initially I thought it was weird that it was an option and didn't jump to decide to go that route. It wasn't until later in pregnancy is when I decided to do it. I decided I wanted to do it because I really enjoyed being induced with my first and it was a great experience (6 hours of labor, 11 mins of pushing, epidural half way through).

Today (June 17) was my 39 week mark and the date of my induction. I knew she was head down and I was at 3cm at my 38 week appointment last Friday. 

At 8 this morning they called to let me know they could get started at 9am. (Last night they called to let me know I was first on the list to call when a bed was available.)

We arrived at the hospital at 9, checked in and it took about an hour to get all ready for my induction. 

It was 10:10 when it officially started with pitocin. After 30 minutes my contractions (that I was already having from before I arrived) weren't getting more intense so they up the dosage (started low and went up to the next level).

Within 30 minutes of that I was having regular contractions that we're getting more intense. I already knew I wanted to get an epidural and so I asked my nurse to call the anesteologist so we could get it going before it got too painful. 

He came in and got me setup for my epidural and was done around 12pm. By this point my contractions were getting more intense but I could handle the pain. He told me that within 15 minutes I should be feeling better. With my first labor my epidural went well and worked great for me, however, this time around it didn't work so well. After the 15 minutes passed I was barely feeling anything so we had him come back in to check it out, since he was with another patient it wasn't until about 12:30 when he came back to make some changes (I don't know how this all works so I can't really say what he did). After he left it really wasn't until 1pm that it really started to work. Fortunately it was helping before then but it didn't do the full effect until 1pm. 

Now that I was finally numb my nurse was going to do a catheter and check to see how far I was dilated and I was at a 10! (When I arrived I was at a 3.5 and at 12 I was a 6.5.) 

Oh, also my water broke on its own at sometime, can't remember when. We were going to wait to break it by my doctor when the epidural started to work but my body decided it was ready. 

The doctor came in and all the support staff needed for births. They had me do three pushes during each contraction and she was out after three contractions and was born at 1:20pm. 

I'm so glad I did the induction since my labor was so fast. Next time I know to ask for the epidural right away since I almost did have time for it to kick in/work right. (Again, I don't know how epidurals work but my guess he did a low dosage because I'm petite, but I really don't know.)

I didn't enjoy feeling as many contractions as I did but otherwise my labor was great! It's kind of hard to beat a three hour labor - even though I was a major drama queen during the last hour of contractions, haha. At one point I told my husband I wasn't doing this again and if he wanted more kids we would need to adopt. Of course, I already have changed my mind about going through labor again and we already talked about wanting to adopt before we got married too. So we'll see what happens in those areas. ;-)

Baby Korra is 19 inches and 7 pounds, 3 ounces. We did skin to skin right away for awhile and she has been nursing like a champ all day!