Happy
Birthday Ryan! Today is your day,
and I want to walk you through your birth story.
Wednesday
morning, August 1st, at approximately 12AM I woke up to an
unexpected gush—my water broke. I
woke dad up and called the doctor.
We took our time, and were not in panic (as you may see in all the
movies) because my contractions really hadn’t started to get intense yet.
The on-call
doctor told me that I needed to go ahead and come in to the hospital, just to
keep me monitored. So dad and I
finished packing our bags, and Bryce stayed with grammy while we went to the
hospital.
We arrived
about 1am, where all the nurses got me checked in and set up in bed. I chose not to have an epidural at this
point because I was only 4 cm dilated and my contractions were manageable. The nurses told us to get comfortable
and sleep until morning if at all possible, but they would keep me hooked up to
the machine to monitor your heartbeat and the frequency and intensity of my
contractions. Sleeping proved to
be a challenge as we were both pretty wound up from the excitement of seeing
you soon! So, we did what we do best—we
turned on the TV, and were entertained most of the night by watching the Summer
Olympics, which had just started 3 days prior.
By 3am, dad
was able to get about 3 hours of sleep, while I stayed awake and worked through
my contractions with you as many were pretty intense, but thankfully they were
only coming every 10 -12 minutes.
By 6:30am,
the night nurse came back in and recommended that I take a shower and get up
for a bit before the doc and day nurses came to start pitocin and provide an
epidural. So after the shower, my
contractions were definitely increasing in intensity and frequency, and thank
goodness the day nurse came when she did as she was able to get the
anestiologist to provide me with a much needed epidural and pain relief by
8am.
The epidural
is a weird feeling—it’s kind of a dull pain and it’s necessary to be hunched
over so that the physician can find the exact right spot in your back. This is hard to do because (1) my belly
is huge at this point and (2) you have to sit like that through contractions
and that’s a tough feet. Dad was
really into this and loves watching this procedure, as he did with Bryce too,
so much so that the physician had to tell him to sit down! They didn’t want him to faint, so he
had to sit.
After the
epidural, I was feeling much better—evident by how chatty I was for the rest of
the morning and day. I could still
feel the intensity of the contractions, but the pain relief was fantastic. I could still move my legs (Bryce I
couldn’t move anything below my waist), but was nearly totally pain free.
Around 10:45am,
I really hadn’t progressed past a 6cm, and at this point when the nurse checked
to see how dilated I was she realized that my water had not completely
broken. The nurse had previously
said that I would have you by 3pm, but little did we know that when the physician
broke the rest of my water I would be ready to start pushing by noon.
So I was
fully dilated to 10cm by noon and around 12:15pm, I started pushing with
you. It was no big deal. I would push real hard, and then rest. This was just completely different experience than Bryce. By about 12:35, the nurse ran to get
the physician as you were right on the verge of coming out. The next contraction, your head came
out, and the doc had to cut the cord that was loosely wrapped around your neck
(which blood went flying, almost on to daddy). The following push you came all the way out. It was really kind of neat because I
could see everything in the reflection of the physcian’s glasses. I saw the whole thing and can just
remember you coming out.
When you
came out, you were pretty quite, eyes closed, but just whiney. You had this little whiney sound about
you, and you never really cried. I
don’t think we ever heard your real lungs until well after we arrived home from
the hospital. You came out a lot
bigger than I thought you would too--
6lbs, 9oz.; 19.25 inches.
You were so perfect!
