Our Family of Three

It all started at 10 o'clock last night. Mandy and I had just returned home from a very tasty dinner at a Casa De Pico's for my Mom's birthday. Mandy hadn't taken a nap in the afternoon, so she was more tired than usual. That's when the pains started.
These pains were much stronger and more regular than she had ever had before. Of course, we wanted to make sure this was the real thing and not the fake labor, since we really didn't want to head over to La Jolla just to be sent home. So she endured them until 1 AM or so. We tried to cope with them by changing positions, having me massage her back, taking a warm shower, etc. By 1 AM, the contractions were coming 3-5 minutes apart, and were fairly regular. At this point we realized it certainly wasn't fake, and headed to the hospital.
When we got there, they hooked Mandy up to the contraction monitoring machine and observed her for 1 hour. It turns out she was in labor, but it was very, very early. Mandy and I were shocked because how intense the pain was, even at this stage. Mandy could hardly walk. They gave us a choice: go home and come back later, or walk around and see if it progressed farther. We chose the latter--I think both of us would have been pretty shook up if we ended up back at home. Poor Mandy wasn't going to get any sleep or rest where ever she was.
Lucky for us, after walking around for an hour, with every 5 steps or so followed by massive contraction, they decided that Mandy was in enough pain to go ahead and admit us. This was about 4:30 or5 in morning. Both of us were exhausted. Within an hour, they administered her epidural--and it was a miraculous thing. How on Earth did they ever have babies before they came up with this stuff? Mandy felt TONS better and was able to rest at that point, although she wasn't really able to sleep much since she had her blood pressure being monitored every 5 min and nurses had to keep doing tests, setting things up, etc.
Anyway, after a few more hours of contractions and some pushing in the final hour, little baby Connor was born at 12:02 on Saturday, Nov 6. Our handsome little mini-man weighed 8 lbs and 7 oz, and was 21 inches long. And then there were three of us.