Some people might say it's sad that I'm calling the birth of my child the second best day of my life so I want to start this post out by sharing the BEST day of my life.
The best day of my life was the day I married my husband. I couldn't have asked for a better man to spend the rest of my life with. And our party of a wedding was truly fabulous. Those of you reading this probably already know the story so I won't share it here, but the reason I say it's the best day of my life? I wouldn't have had the second best day of my life without the first. I am beyond lucky to have found my husband and the day we got married is the day that determined the rest of my life. Without that day I wouldn't have my daughter. That day I was SO happy, I still remember every detail!
So now onto the second best day of my life. I'll share with you Ryley's birth story.
On July 3rd I was wrapping up things at work and begin feeling slight contractions but nothing was painful yet. By about 7 or 8 that night I was definitely having full on contractions. They still weren't that painful though. They continued and at about 2am we finally decided to go to the hospital. My contractions had been about a minute apart for quite a few hours at that point.
We got there and at first they check you out to see if you should be admitted. The nurse asked me on a scale from 1 to 10 how my pain level was. I said a 4. She told me I probably wasn't ready to be admitted but that she'd still check, ha! Apparently a level 4 wasn't high enough to be in real labor :) Well the nurse was right, I was still only 2 centimeters which I had been for over a week. The nurse gave me a shot of morphine to help me sleep and then we headed up.
Once home I was able to sleep for a bit. I woke up about 7 or 8 and I was definitely having full on contractions at that point. I was still comfortable enough so we put on Longmire, thank you Netflix, and hung out on the couch. I wanted to make sure I waited this one out since the last time we went to the hospital they sent me home. So I went for a long while and around 2 or 3pm I decided that if the contractions got much worse I wasn't going to want to have to sit in the car to drive to the hospital so we should go now. The hospital is about 25 minutes away so I knew it was going to be an uncomfortable ride, and that it was!
When we got there they didn't even bother checking me out, they could tell from my face I was ready to go. We got all situated and checked in and I was told I was dilated to 7cm. WOW, I couldn't believe I had stayed at home from 2cm to 7cm! I was honestly kind of proud of myself for that one. The nurses kept asking me about pain meds, but I really wasn't certain what I wanted still. I was proud of myself for getting to 7cm but the contractions were continuing to get worse so I didn't know if I could go without anything. I waited a bit longer and then asked for the phentenol. I wanted to try that one first so that I could still get up and move around. The nurses from my birthing class told me it would feel like having a giant margarita; that sounded fun!
I got the phentenol and a few moments later Matt was calling to the nurse about the baby's heart rate. The nurse rushed over and saw that her heart rate was dropping so they rolled me over onto my side and it thankfully went back up. Because of that, they wouldn't let me get out of bed any longer so the whole reason I did the phentenol, over the epidural, was no longer applicable. I tried to keep going on just the phentenol but I finally gave in. I was crying during every contraction and couldn't talk. Luckily my amazing husband knew exactly what I was "saying". He told the nurse I was ready for the epidural. A little while later I got it and all was right in the world!
That epidural is pretty amazing. We had been at the hospital for a few hours at that point. I honestly don't even remember it since I was in so much pain, it was all a bit of a blur....until I got the epidural. After I got it the nurse said she'd come back in about 3 hours to see how I was doing. Matt and I turned on the TV and watched random shows about building awesome pools, very exciting stuff.
After 3 hours the nurse came back to check on me. I wasn't feeling much pain at this point, I could still feel my contractions but they weren't painful. Her first reaction was "whoa we are ready to go"! And so the pushing began! Since I had an epidural I still wasn't in pain so honestly this part was pretty awesome! I could feel the contractions and feel myself pushing but without the pain. I'm glad I got to feel what I was doing. The nurse went to go see where my doctor was, came back, and told us she was delivering another baby so we'd just do little pushes until she was finished. Hmmmm....we thought, "hope it doesn't take too long". The nurse directed Matt to grab a new when it was time to push. What a great husband, he really did amazing! My contractions were 3 minutes apart at this point so I didn't have to push for very long stretches at a time which was nice.
The doctor finally arrived and I swear like 20 minutes later little Ryley was here!! She was born at 10:55pm on July 4th weighing 6lbs 8ounces and 18 3/4 inches long.
Giving birth was my greatest fear prior to doing it; once I did it, it was the most amazing thing I had ever done. The moment she was "free" I started crying and so did Matt. It was absolutely amazing! I love this little girl more than anything, just writing this post makes me want to cry. I am SO excited to see her grow up.
So that's the story of how our little one arrived into the world...and we couldn't be happier!
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