It's Real Life Part 4

This weeks It's Real Life (click on the picture to go to Farm Fresh) post is about a momentous occasion. Any one we've had. I thought I would just pick the most recent, Rylie's birth. There are no pictures of the actual labor, well, there are pictures, but sorry, I'm not sharing those. I will however share some of the ones in the hospital, and also her meeting Hunter for the first time. They will all be in a little slide show at the bottom of the post. Not my ideal way of posting this, but due to time constraints, and simplicity's sake...well...that's how you're getting it.

I had my Dr. appt at 9:00 am, and she was surprised to see me still pregnant. I was actually 39 weeks and 3 days I think, had been having contractions for weeks, and Hunter was 10 days early on his own. She checked me and I was still 3 cm and 50% effaced. She stripped my membranes and tried to break my water while she checked me (and made me swear not to tell the nurses she did it on purpose if it broke), but it just wouldn't break. She said that's all it would take to really get me going, so she said to go walk for an hour or so and then go to the hospital and tell them I'm leaking fluid and hopefully get them to admit me. I was pretty worried that they would still send me home, and that I'm such a bad liar they would know it.

I called Seth and told him what was going on, he was at work, so I took him Hunter's car seat so he could pick him up from daycare. Then we went to the mall to walk for a little bit and so I could eat, since they wouldn't let me eat once I was admitted. After that we went over to the hospital, and by then it was about 12:00. They checked me and I was still 3 cm. They had me walk till 1:40, I think, and then we went back to the triage room and waited to find out what was going on. My Dr. said she really wanted me to stay, so they never checked me again, because they got busy transferring me to a room. I think it was around 3:30 or so when I finally got to the labor room. Seth came to the hospital after he dropped Hunter off at MIL's house. He had time after work to go home and clean up a little bit, since I wanted to make sure I had a room before he came over there.

So I guess around 4:00 they decided to start me on pitocin while they waited on my Dr. to come. I had been her 1st appt. of the day and she had something like 50 patients to see that day, so I still had to wait awhile for her to break my water. Since they were starting the pitocin I had them do the epidural soon after that, because that stuff just sucks! They still hadn't checked me since they knew she'd be coming anyway. My Dr. finally got there around 7:30 or so and broke my water, I was 5 cm and 80% effaced then. My epidural was different this time, last time it was so strong I couldn't even move my legs at all and they had to tell me when to push. This time I could feel my legs and they were just really tingly, and I could just barely feel some pressure from the contractions. So, then we figured we'd be waiting a while. The nurse had me switch sides a couple of times because Rylie was facing the wrong way and they wanted to see if she'd turn. The stupid monitor alarm kept going off because she'd move, the nurse had to come it to check it. Around 8:15 she was checking the alarm for my bp and I told her I maybe needed more epidural stuff because I was feeling a lot of pressure from the last few cx I'd had, so she decided to check me and found Rylie's head right there. I started pushing then, and pushed through one cx. She went and got the Dr. (who had 4 patients in labor at the time) and then they all got everything set up really quick. I pushed once to get her head out and that was it, the rest of her just kind of came out. She was holding onto her umbilical cord with one hand when she came out, it was pretty funny, too bad there's no picture of it. So, it was really a very easy and short labor and delivery. She was born on Wed. the 11th at 8:42 pm, and we got out of the hospital Thursday night at 9:00pm.

Oh, and if you compare this to Hunter's delivery....a lot alike (I know, I'm very lucky!)

Here's the pictures... (the picture of the quilt is the one I made for her.)