I too had a time of it with my first baby, with that frustratin of getting checked after hours of hard labor only to find you are 6 cm dilated. I finally gave in to the epidural when, 12 hours into active labor, they told me they wanted to start using pitocin and insert a pressure catheter. In the end active labor lasted 19 hours, which is not nearly as long as some, but 3 hours of it was pushing. Talk about exhausting. But the good news is I had my second baby in six hours, and didn't need an epidural. I'm now expecting the third and hoping it resembles the second more than the first. Odds are it will, especially since I'll finally have the chance to give birth in a birth center with the full support of midwives instead of at a hospital.