(If you haven’t read part one, yet … click here.)

February 14th. Valentine’s Day.

That morning, I woke up cramping.

It wasn’t long before the pain had me rolling on the floor.

I woke up my husband. He called his dad to come over and watch the boys. When he pulled up, I dragged myself out to our minivan and tried to get as comfortable as I could in the passenger seat. I yelled at Matt that if he didn’t hurry up, get in and start driving that I would have to call 911.

At the time, a little voice in the back of my head thought that maybe my threat to bring in a brigade of paramedics was a bit melodramatic.

In retrospect, 911 might have been a good idea.

Matt got us to the Hospital at 5:46 am.

Roughly 36 hours after my Epidural was taken out and I was sent home.

I was wheeled up to labor and delivery, where an initial check revealed that I was six centimeters.

I was screaming for the epidural at this point.

Ten minutes later, after putting in an IV to start fluids, the Nurse checked me again.

She announced to another nurse that I was now at eight centimeters and my bag of waters was bulging.

When I heard that, I knew that there was no time for me to get an epidural.

I started screaming for them to give me some pain medication in my IV line instead. Anything they could get to me quick enough, just to take the edge off.

But there wasn’t even time for that.

Just moments later, my water broke and almost immediately after the Baby started crowning.

The nurses were panicking (and telling me not to push), the hospital’s on-call doctor was just walking in the room (still half asleep) and my OB-GYN was still in route to the hospital.

The baby was delivered with a single push. She came out so fast that the nurse barely had time to catch her head and her body actually landed on the bed. In fact, right before I pushed her out, the nurse had noticed I was lying halfway off the bed, and she had yelled out to one of the other nurses that if she didn’t roll me over the baby would have fallen out onto the floor. No joke.

28 minutes after arriving at the hospital, at 6:14 in the morning, Novalee Berlin was born at exactly 37 weeks gestation, weighing 5 pounds 10 ounces and measuring 18 inches long.

My little Valentine’s Day lovebug…

I still can’t believe how fast she arrived.

Seriously, if we had left the house any later, I probably would have given birth in my minivan.