Max's birth story

Kiddo was due on March 21 (my good friend's birthday; hi, Lucy!) But I was really hoping for a St. Patty's day baby - how cool would that be? and no, we're not even a teensy little bit Irish. Lo and behold, my due date came and went and there was still no baby in sight. I had an appointment with my doctor for an NST on Friday, and had another u/s done (the tech told me that she couldn't get proper measurements on the baby's head since it was just so low - good news!) and was scheduled for an induction Monday morning. All weekend, I was hoping he'd come on his own and had some very mild contractions, which obviously led nowhere.
So on Monday morning, we got up bright and early and went to the hospital. I got admitted at around 8am, got my IV started, got asked a million questions. At 10 am, I was at 2cm (same as a week before), so they started the pitocin (slowly, and then kept increasing the dose). About 30 minutes later, I was feeling definite contractions. At this point, I labored in bed and watched some TV with the hubs. We had a totally awesome Russian nurse, who came in regularly to check on me and the baby and kept us company. At about 1:30, she called my OB to come in and break my water. But apparently baby boy had other plans, because 10 or so minutes later, my water broke on its own! When my dr. checked me, I was at 4cm.
At about 2:30, I got out of bed and the new nurse had me labor standing for a while and the contractions were definitely a lot stronger and so much more painful. She asked if she had time to go fill out some paperwork before calling the anesthesiologist and I said "Yeah, sure, I'll be alright" But as soon as she left the room, I was begging for the epidural.
The anesthesiologist got there about 20 minutes later and set everything up. This was the longest hour in my life, I was in so much pain (the baby seemed to have descended super fast!) Finally, the epi was in and a few minutes later, I felt a lot better. Started pushing at a little past 3:30pm and pushed for maybe 10 minutes: at 3:42, our beautiful baby Max was here!!