The day that we met . . .

For those of you who are interested here is my labor story. For those of you that don't want to know or don't care then you can just skip this post.

I was really surprised at the fact how easy my labor and deliver really was. When the Dr had told me the Friday before this little guy came that he was going to induce me all of these thoughts started to run through my mind. Mostly about how painful was this really going to be and how was I going to act. Well it really was not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

I woke up at about 1:30 a.m. with contractions that were about 10 mins apart. I knew that the contractions were not close enough together to call the hospital to go in. So I got up to go to the bathroom and noticed that I was bleeding. Well according to my labor instructions I was suppose to call right away if I had any bleeding. I called the hospital and within 10 mins the on call Dr called me back and told me to head into labor and delivery. I had already woken Kris up but I went back in and told him to get up and get ready. We arrived at the hospital at about 2 am and had to wait in the ER for about 10 mins or so for them to bring us up to labor and delivery.

When we got up to labor and delivery they hooked me up to the fetal monitoring machine and monitored the baby's heartbeat and my contractions. While we were there my contractions went from 10 mins apart to 6 mins apart. They gave me some juice to try to wake the baby up to see how he was handling the contractions. They checked me and I was still only 2 cm dilated at 90% effaced. So after being there about and hour to an hour and a half the Dr decided to give me a sleeping pill and send me home. They told me to come back if I was having trouble walking and talking through my contractions and if they were at least 5 mins apart. When we were walking back to the car to go home I was having trouble walking and talking through my contractions so I was a little scared to go home cause I was thinking that I would not be able to make it back in time.

We went home and I tried to get some sleep but that was not possible because of all the contractions. They were anywhere from 6 mins to 2 mins apart but they jumped around so I did not think that it was time to go back to the hospital. I tried to take a warm shower and even a bath but that did not work. So at about 6:00 am my contractions were constantly 2-3 mins apart, so I called the hospital again and they told me to come back. About 3o mins later we headed back out to the hospital. When we had gone earlier there was no traffic but this time we got stuck in the morning traffic so we did not get back to the hospital until about 7.

They checked me in and I was at 3 cm so they decided to admit me. By the time they got me to the room about an hour later I was at 4 closer to 5 and my Dr came in and broke my water and told me that I could have an epidural. Then the nurse informed me that it was going to be a little bit for the epidural cause there were a few people that were further along then I was but she could give me something to take the "edge" off. I ended up getting my epidural about an hour later and I was feeling no pain. I was a little scared about getting that since I HATE needle and the thought of putting something in my back was not a fun idea.

After about another hour I was at 6cm but my contractions were not consistent so they had to give me some potosin to make them more regular. I dilated from 6 to 10 over the next few hours. At about 2:30 pm I was really close to 10cm and they turned off my epidural so that I would feel the urge to start pushing. The entire day the baby was "sunny side up" and so the nurse was doing everything that she could to try to get him to turn around but he was being super stubborn. At about 3:30, the nurse kicked everyone out of the room cause it was time to start pushing. I started to do a few pushes and was thinking that I was never going to get this baby out but both Kris and the nurse were telling me what a good job that I was doing.

After a few practice pushes, the nurse called the Dr to come down cause this baby was on his way. She had to tell me to stop pushing cause if I keep pushing the baby would be here before the Dr. could make it down. The Dr finally got there and I pushed about 3 more times and he was out. I did not even know that his head was out and the Dr told me to stop pushing. It was totally an out of body experience. It was like my brain was not connecting to the fact that this was the baby that had been growing inside of my for the last 9 months. I had such a wonderful experience that I thought to myself after I had him that I could do this a few more times.

The first time that Daddy held Riley.