My childbirth experience - you're probably not interested

I had this dream a few weeks before I had the baby in which my doula came to the house. She was hanging around and it was getting late and I was beginning to wonder when she was going to leave. Finally, she looked at me and said, "Well, are you ready?" I replied, "What are you talking about?" She responded, "It's 8:30 and I expect that you will have this baby by midnight." I responded, "That's funny. I didn't even realize I was in labor."
Wishful thinking but, in fact, I was uncertain that I was in labor until the very end.
Here is how it happened. Just after midnight on Friday I woke up with contractions. They weren't very painful and were pretty far apart but I was too excited to sleep. I putzed around the house and online. Finally, I decided I should try to get to sleep. That was a mistake because the contractions were more painful when I was lying down and, furthermore, when I started to doze off the contraction would startle me from sleep. It was more painful then because I would tense up.
By 6 a.m. they were coming at about 5 minutes apart, which is when many folks head to the hospital. Since I was trying to do most of my laboring at home, I called my doula, Jen, at that point. I also decided to hop in the bathtub. The bathtub was a mistake. Once I got in there the contractions stopped altogether and my doula arrived to find me not in labor at all. I felt like a schmuck.
We all tried to get back to sleep for a couple hours and I did manage to sleep for a bit but then the contractions returned, at about 10 a.m. but they were not regular at all.
Jen decided to head home. She told me to call if anything changed but that she expected I was in early labor and could go on like that for days. I was disappointed and skeptical that I was going to meet my goal of having a natural childbirth. I mean, if contractions in early labor hurt that much, how was I going to stand the later contractions?
I told Jason that I wanted pancakes so we ended up at "The Baker's Square," joking all along that we might be wasting our last chance to eat out. Anyway, I was still having contractions all across the board (4 minutes, 7 minutes, 12 minutes, 4 minutes, 4 minutes, etc). We went home and putzed around. Finally, I decided to take a shower at around 5 p.m. and at this time my brother showed up. He was in town for a frisbee tournament. We sat down to dinner. I tried to sit on the chair and found that I was completely uncomfortable, as if I was sitting directly on the baby, so I moved to my stability ball (thank you, pilates!). At this same time, my contractions started coming regularly at 4 minutes. We moved inside to watch preseason football (the colts, I believe). From this point on, everything is a bit surreal and I only recall bits and pieces.
I decided to call Jen to let her know that the contractions were pretty regular even though they didn't feel much stronger that the ones I 'd had earlier. I reasoned that I must be in active labor because, if I wasn't, there wouldn't be any such thing as natural childbirth (or at least people who were crazy enough to opt for it more than once). I called my OB to let her know that she might be called in later. Jen arrived and we left for the hospital. I arrived just after 10 p.m. already dilated 8 out of 10 cms. By the time my doctor arrived at 11, I was fully dilated.
My pushing phase was protracted (3 hours - they usually give you drugs to move things more quickly at 2 hours but my fabulous OB saw I was making progress and let me continue on). Pushing is very hard mostly because you feel this tremendous urge to push but it is difficult to figure out how to direct the urge. However, compared to the contractions, pushing wasn't painful at all. With the contractions I'd been experiencing all day there was nothing to do but try to relax and let them do the work of moving the baby down and opening the cervix. Contractions hurt like a sonofabitch. Pushing is really hard work but at least the contractions in that phase are telling you to do something and you get to do it. All along my contractions remained several minutes apart. Often we would get in long discussions between bouts of pushing. Sometimes I was a little too out of it to take part in the discussions but I was lucid enough to listen to them.
After E. was born, I had a uterine hemorrhage delivering the placenta. I wasn't really paying attention to anything beside my new baby at this point. In order to stop the bleeding, my OB gave me a shot of pitocin, a drug that helps the uterus contract. It did work to stop the bleeding. However, I lost a lot of blood, enough that they were thinking about transfusing me. I lost so much, in fact, that a couple of hours later when they tried to get me out of bed to get cleaned up and moved to my permanent room, I passed out. I had to spend the next 17 hours in bed (using a bedpan, UGH!). I was SO excited the next morning when I had recovered enough to take a shower.
So, yeah, that's about how it went. I am happy I opted to for natural childbirth and I intend to do it again next time.