Labor and delivery

Thursday morning i woke up from a dream where I was in labor. But it was one of those really weird dreams with stuff that doesn't make sense and the elevator just wouldn't go to the floor in the hospital i needed to go to. I just mention it because it appears my body knew I was about to start labor even though I couldn't tell yet. So I woke up at 8am and sat at my computer and my back started hurting. I thought i was just uncomfortable (horrible chair) and soon it stopped. But as you know how contractions work it came back in about a half hour and i began to realize what it was. Well within an hour from my first contraction, they were already coming ever 4-6 minutes. I laid down and was drinking lots of water to make sure it wasn't false labor. Well, after an hour of having them so close together, I went to the hospital. I got there and they said they were full, sent me to the waiting room and told me to call my doctor. I wasn't very happy, but didn't have much choice. Of course my doctor was 'busy and had to call back". A nurse came to the waiting room and felt my stomach while i was having a contraction to make sure i was really contracting and not really having indigestion or something i guess. Well she apparently realized i was having contractions and called the doctor herself. My doctor told me to come to her office so since it was down the street we walked in the heat over to her office. Sure enough, I was dilated to 5cm already. She said 'Go to the hospital, I'll call and tell them to get you a room and meet you over there.'
Well of course when i got there, they still didn't have a room, so i had to sit in the hallway outside the nurse's station and fill out paperwork while they cleaned a room. Finally, after an hour had passed since i had first arrived at the hospital, they gave me a room. I was now up to 7cm, up two in just an hour. I was starting to get worried because I really wanted an epidural and the cut off for getting one is usually 8cm and I was moving so fast that I didn't know i'd be able to get one because i still had to get 2 bags of IV's in me, my bloodwork taken and the results back before they could get me one.
My doctor came in and broke my water. Apparently, even though this little girl was coming a week early, she had already pooped and there was merconium in the amniotic fluid, not so good. So they were going to get the neonatal people there in case anything went wrong. Well I finally got my IVs and bloodwork back and now the nurse was paging the anesthesiologist and he wasn't coming. By this time I was not handling the pain very well. And before he came I started to have the urge to push and said so. The nurse then called the OR to find another anesthesiologist to come help me. She told me later she refused to check how far along i was now because she knew how bad I wanted the epidural. What a good nurse! Finally I got it and I was 9cm. Not too much later, I was ready to push, but since they had so many deliveries happening at the same time, they let me 'labor it out' to get the baby as far down without pushing and wait for the doctors and nurses to get done with the other deliveries. Finally at 5pm they were ready and we started to push. It wasn't nearly as exhausting as I was afraid it would be. At 5:58pm my baby girl made her way into the world. I didn't get to hold her right away because of the merconium, they wanted to make sure everything was fine. She started to cry and all knew it was good. They finally brought her to me to hold and my arms were so weak i could only hold her for a few seconds. She is so precious!