The third time's a charm

As promised, here's the story:

On Wednesday, at 8pm, Michelle's water broke. Knowing that giving birth may take a while, we first finished dinner, then Michelle took a shower, while I sent out the information that "Bouton" was going to be born soon.
We arrived at the hospital at 9:30pm. Unfortunately, the assistant doctor was not able to confirm that Michelle's water had broken indeed - there was no amniotic fluid coming out anymore. While the midwife believed Michelle because of the way she described what happened, the doctor wanted to send us back home. Eventually he agreed to the midwife's suggestion that Michelle and I should go walking around for about two hours. The midwife believed that the baby's head was completely blocking the uterus, and that walking could sufficiently displace the baby to get the sanitary napkin wet.
Two hours of walking around in the city later, Michelle and I tried for the second time at 12:30am. However, the sanitary napkin was still completely dry. The midwife asked whether contractions had started, and Michelle denied. However, her belly hurt a little bit, and so we decided to still do one final check before we went back home. That was a good decision. On the monitor that recorded Bouton's heartbeat and Michelle's contractions, there were clearly visible contractions. However, there were also signs that the baby's heartbeat slowed down after the contraction peaked. This was a bad sign that indicated stress for the baby (it is much more normal that there is a deceleration of the heartbeat in sync with contractions followed by immediate recovery as contractions end - that means that the umbilical cord is being squeezed). Now, suddenly, the doctor was very alert.
Fortunately, the deceleration disappeared, and there were nice, regular contractions - one every three minutes - for the entire hour Michelle was hooked up to the monitor. Thus, instead of getting a caesarean, Michelle got admitted to the hospital, and she was given a bed around 2am.
Since contractions hurt more when she was lying down, Michelle decided to walk around. So we walked, until I got really tired (I didn't have contractions to keep me awake), and I slept for about an hour in a rather comfortable chair. We both got plenty to drink all the time, which was very nice (in the birth preparation class in San Diego we were told that all Michelle would get were ice chips from time to time).
Around 5am, the contractions went from rather painful to extremely painful, and around 6:30am, they came so quickly one after the other that Michelle didn't even have the time to take a deep breath in between. When it turned out that in the entire time since labour started, there had been no dilatation yet, it was clear that Michelle would opt for the epidural.
At 7am, she came to the delivery room for the third time. Since she had to wait for the anesthesiologist, the midwife prepared a hot bath for her. This did wonders. Michelle was able to relax, and suddenly, spacing between contractions became much longer again, and contractions weren't as painful as before. Michelle almost opted out of the epidural, though when she was lying on the bed after the bath, there was no longer any doubt that it would be a good idea to be without pain.
The epidural worked like a charm. Contractions stayed as regular as they had been during the bath, and from then on, everything went great. At 10:30, Michelle was already 5cm dilated, and at noon, dilation was complete. The baby was still quite far back, so the midwife suggested we let it move down on its own. That didn't happen, so from 12:30 on, Michelle was ordered to push. She did that very well, "as if it wasn't her first child", as the midwife said.
It was quite amazing to eventually see the head come out. I have seen babies before, but when one finally came out of Michelle, I was really amazed at the size of that head and then the body. Also, Gabriel was rather blue, though that was quickly remedied with exposing him to oxygen. He was, and is, in great health.

When we heard a midwife insist "Push! Push with all your force!" in an adjacent room a little later, Michelle and I were already able to exchange knowing looks, and a slightly tired, but happy smile.