>>I had my daughter in the hospital but without any pain meds. I believed it would be best for my daughter. It was a very long and painful night. I highly recommend pain meds (the epidural like my best friend got when she gave birth) to anyone about to have a baby :o)
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>I had problems when Solomon was born and ended up heavily medicated. With Nathaniel, things went much more smoothly, but the contractions were very strong. So when I got to 5cm, I asked for an epidural (they wouldn't do it before that). The anesthesiologist showed up 20 minutes later, by which point I was 8 cm and they wouldn't give me an epidural. He was born less than an hour later. All told, from when I woke up in labor to delivery was less than 5 hours.
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>Tamar

Wow. I spent about 9 hours in labor which isn't bad either. My water broke at 10pm and Haley was born at 7am. As soon as my water broke, I had very strong contractions 4 minutes apart so I headed straight to the hospital. My oldest sister had her 1st baby in less than 2 hours and her 2nd baby in 20 minutes. She drove to the hospital and had her baby when she walked in the door. She never even made it onto the labor and delivery floor. My mom popped babies out in less than 2 hour each time as well. I was hopeful that I would be as lucky, but it wasn't to be. Both my mom and my oldest sister warned me to get to the hospital immediately because we pop babies out fast. Ha ha ha. Imagine my surprise when the labor went on and on and on... :o) The problem with long labor and no pain meds is that you actually can reach muscle failure from all the contractions and then when you need to, you are not be able to push. Two of my sisters were so small that they had to have csections.