Ryder's Labor and Delivery

About 5 weeks prior to my due date I started to dialate and efface. I think that every lady at the end of her pregnancy is hoping for an early delivery, but my doctor seemed to really think that I would have Ryder early. No doctor should EVER say that to a pregnant woman. It makes you just hope way too much. For over two weeks I had my bag packed for the hospital, and every single night I would shower, wash my hair, and dry my hair because I couldn't stand the idea of going to the hospital with dirty hair. But all the anticipation was for nothing. I went to my final appointment on the 3rd and Dr. Connelly scheduled me for an induction on the 9th (one day past my due date). I think he really didn't think I'd even make it to that because I was about 80% effaced and 3 1/2 cm dialated. He was wrong.

On September 9th we got up and got ready for the day and made our 45 minute drive to the hospital in complete calm. There was no freaking out because of painful contractions. Trevor and I had always talked about how weird it would be to know the day your kid was going to be born, and here we were doing exactly that.

At 8 am I was admitted into the hospital. I got dressed in my lovely hospital gown, got into bed, and was hooked up to the heart monitor. My nurse, Yvonne, began asking me questions and filling out paperwork. The whole time she's doing this we find out that I am having contractions I'm just not feeling them. She checks me and we were pleasantly surprised to find that I was dialated to a 5. Sweet! Halfway there!

At 9:30 my dr. came in and broke my water. About 5 minutes after that my favorite dr, the one bringing me my epidural, came in. How great was this delivery going to be? I was going to get my meds before I even started to really feel contractions. I could not have been more pleased. But things were about to get crappy. When I had Brody they struggled a bit getting my epidural in. They even bent the needle in my back, but when all was said and done it got in and I felt great. This time was much harder. It seems that the muscles in my back are too tight or something. The dr. had me lean over and he began to poke....and poke....and poke. I ended up with 7 different holes in my back, but I was probably poked about 30 times. He would get the needle into the epidural space but he couldn't ever thread the catheter in. He kept hitting my bones. It was extremely painful! He would go back into a hole at a different angle hoping to get it, but it just wasn't happening. My body began to shake uncontrollably. After an hour of being hunched over we got it in. I was definitely feeling my contractions now. The epidural made my right thigh very numb and it never did anything more. My contractions were getting intense. I was on my side and just crying because I hurt so much. Trevor kept telling me to call the nurse but I didn't think she would do anything. I kept thinking this epidural would work.

After what seemed like forever I called my nurse and told her my epidural wasn't working She came in and had called a different dr to try and fix my epidural. She said this dr. was excellent. She could do an epidural in like 5 minutes. Well, it took her 35 minutes to do mine. During all this time I'm trying to stay still but I'm having major contractions. When the epidural gets put in she checks me and I'm at an 8! At some point during all of this I was asked if a student nurse could come in and observe. I told them sure, why not? Let's make this a party. I'm such a prude and so private but at this point what was one more person? I already had 4 dr's that had seen my vage plus Trevor and 2 more later right before Ryder was born.

The second epidural made both my legs very numb and that is about it. I was feeling every contraction. I have NEVER EVER been one of those people that wants to "fully experience" child birth. I say bring me the drugs. I have also heard people say that they had to deliver without meds and once they did it they were so glad that they had. They felt proud that they had done it or something. Hah!

In what seemed like only a few breaths I felt the need to push and the dr. was there. Holy cow! Talk about the most painful experience of my life. There was a lot of crying involved. There was a lot of me saying, "Trevor, I can't do this!" Granted, at this point there is no turning back, you pretty much are doing this no matter what, but I seriously felt like it might just kill me.

With Brody, I was able to push him out in like 4 pushes. I ended up pushing for only about 20 minutes, but I just couldn't do as well. I felt like I was so busy concentrating on my major pain that I couldn't concentrate on the correct way to push. I also felt like I couldn't breathe. It seemed like I couldn't catch a breath. There was so much burning and tearing going on. At on point I grabbed onto the rails of my bed and when I did I hit a button that made the end of the bed go down, and the dr was sitting on it, so I nearly dumped him on the floor. It felt like such an out of body experience that I couldn't control my actions. I remember apologizing to him. Every once in a while I would catch site of the student nurse and sometimes she would have this terrified look on her face like, "oh my gosh!" and once I was really pushing the baby out I remember her getting this big proud smile on her face and kinda clapping to herself. She was like my own personal cheerleader in the background. After all was said and done I told her that watching me was probably the best birth control for her ever!

Finally after so many tears, burning, and tearing I pushed out Ryder's head. Normally that's the hardest part but Ryder's chest ended up being bigger than his head and it hurt more than his head. Trevor says I cried out more at that point than any other time. With Brody he was face up and that makes labor and delivery much harder I'm told. They never got him turned around either. Ryder was face up as well, but they did turn him around before he came out. However with Ryder being so broad not only did I tear down, but he tore me up on top. So not fun.

Finally Ryder entered the world at 2:06 that afternoon. He came out wailing away. Brody hardly cried at all, and so this was quite different. We knew there was a new baby alive and well right off the bat. In fact, they do the Agpar test at one minute after a baby is born and again at five minutes (it basically tests them on the baby's color, breathing, reflexes etc.) and Ryder scored a 10, which is the best score he could get. Then they took him off my chest and began to clean him up and weigh him.

As all this is going on the dr. then delivers the placenta and because I wasn't numb I felt that and thought it was like a second (but much smaller) baby being born! Then came the stitching and I felt ever one of those go in too. It was seriously the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I remember just crying and crying when Ryder came out because I was so glad he was okay but also I cried a lot for myself. I really couldn't believe what I had just gone through.

Overall the most important thing was having a healthy baby. We were very blessed with that. The following day with a major headache and backache we were able to take our newest addition home. I'm glad to have Ryder out of me. I'm glad he's doing so well, but I'm also very grateful that my first delivery didn't go like this one did because it would have taken me a lot longer to decide to have another one. I felt so proud of myself after I had Brody, but with Ryder I felt like the biggest wimp, and yet it was way harder and I basically did it with no medication.