at the hospital: 1cm to 5cm

When we got there, I was first put into Triage to check out what's going on. At that point, the nurse told me that yes, my water was ruptured, and i was 1 to 2 cm dialated. She told us that we will be admitted for labor. At that point, I felt relief that the pain in the last 6 hours wasn't for no reason. We also both agreed that we are hardly ready for this. Water was still running between my legs and wetting the bed. The nurse helped me to get up and transfered me to a big LDR room, where, I was to spend the next 5 hours or so.
When the nurse saw that I was 3 to 4 cm dialated, she asked if I wanted medication to help me through labor. I told her that I was considering getting epidural. She said OK and got the doctor to give me the medication right away. I wasn't so sure if I wanted to get the epidural so early because I felt that I was still able to handle the pain. The Lamaze class taught me that you can get the medication while you are dialated anywhere between 3 to 7cm. I expressed my hesitation at that time but they told me that my pain will only increase and it's best to do it at that time.
The process of putting in the epidural spanned through 3 or 4 contraction. (I have no idea how many minutes that was....) It was difficult to focus on the breathing through the contraction while the doctor was poking things in my back. They also added another tube to my bladder since I couldn't get up to go to the bathroom anymore. This was a weird and uncomfortable feeling. I think what they did was put a tube through where I would usually urinate and hooked it up to the bladder to pump out the urine. It felt like I needed to go pee but I couldn't but that was OK since that tube took care of it. It was very uncomfortable. In addition to all this, the nurse told me that I had to wear oxygen mask because the baby's heartbeat dropped each time I had contraction. Regularly, his heartbeat should have gone up with the contraction. So at this point, I had IV in my arm along with some sort of antibiotics, epidural in my back, tube to my bladder, and oxygen mask on my face. Lying in a hospital bed with all these tubes hooked up to me was a new experience for a regularly healthy person.
The suggestion to give my the epidural early was a good one because the strength of the contractions escalated between 4 to 5 cm. With the epidural, it blocked out the pain but there was still a lot of uncomfortable pressure. Everytime I had a contraction, I felt like I had to go pee and boo at the same time but couldn't do either. The pressure and what felt like pain was so strong that my body started shaking and I started yelling at each contraction. All through these contractions, Patrick stood next to me, helpless and just encouraging me to breath through them. I can imagine that it must have been difficult and exhausting for him to go through this with me when there was really nothing he could have done. He just held my hand and gave me ice chips. The doctor came to see me when I was 5 cm dialated. It must have been around 10:00 or 10:30am. She left pretty quickly saying that I have a long way to go until I get to 10 cm when I can start pushing.