Riley's Birth

Sunday morning I lost my bloody show. If you know what that is, great. If not, try not to think about it. It's pretty gross. But...I was excited because I knew that meant I would have the baby within a few days. Contractions started coming while I was at church, but they were not very close together and they didn't hurt. I kept timing them all day and they never got any closer. In fact, they stopped altogether around dinnertime. Finally after putting Sienna down to bed, Ryan and I went on a walk in hopes it would trigger labor. It seemed to trigger my contractions to start back up but they were still 10 minutes apart. So we got ready for bed. And Ryan actually went to bed and fell asleep around midnight. I was up reading and didn't want to go to sleep b/c I was still timing my contractions and was noticing that they were only 8 minutes apart. And pretty soon they were only 6 minutes apart and starting to feel somewhat painful. I wasn't sure but it seemed like the real thing so I nudged Ryan awake and told him that we might be going to the hospital in 40 minutes if things kept up the way they were going. He got up, got dressed, and went to the store to buy himself some 5 hour energy. By the time he got back, I was ready to get going, so we called my parents and asked them to start heading up to our apartment to sleep over and take Sienna in the morning. Then we were off.

Once at the hospital, a nurse checked my cervix and found that I was dilated to a 5. It was about 1:30 a.m. My contractions were getting worse and so they sent for the anesthesiologist to come and administer an epidural. I remember asking the nurse, Dara, how long it would be before he would get there (I was not enjoying life at that point, and really wanted that pain relief!). She told me it wouldn't be long. He came in pretty soon and gave me the epidural (which really isn't that bad, painwise, but is very strange feeling when nerves are touched and you feel sensations and electric shocks in far away parts of your body. I really don't like that!). He kept asking me if my legs were tingling or numb and I kept telling him, "maybe...I think I might feel something tingling..?" And after 15 minutes of that, he concluded that he needed to redo the procedure because it wasn't really working. So he did it again, with the same result the second time. Thinking that it might be easier in another position, he had me sit up and lean over the side of the bed while he gave me another epidural. Afterwards, he told me, "We're going to take a little break now" and left the room. I thought at first he was finished, but then realized that it still hadn't worked and that he had to go help someone else with an epidural before he could continue trying to administer mine. He was gone for about 30 minutes, and all the while I was breaking down and absolutely BEGGING Ryan and my nurses to do something! To bring back the doctor! And I remember I just kept saying the word, "Please. Please. Please! Please! " Over and over while trying not to cry and then finally crying as well. I asked the nurse at one point if I was going to be able to get an epidural at all. She checked my cervix again and told me that I was fully dilated but that there was still a chance I could get one as long as my water didn't break. I know I was a pathetic sight, and now I have a lot of respect for the women who had to have babies without any medical pain relief for thousands of years. I couldn't handle it, obviously.

Finally the anesthisiologist was back and he tried again, either one or two more times, I can't remember. The last time he tried I went numb very quickly and it's a good thing because my doctor showed up right then, broke my water, and I was pushing a baby for what felt like one minute and they handed Riley to me. It was so quick and so easy (thank you epidural!) compared to giving birth to Sienna and pushing for 3 hours in a lot of pain!

Anyhow, everything went well until I started to develop a pounding headache a few hours later and was told that it was probably a spinal headache, caused by the large epidural needle puncturing my spinal column and letting spinal fluid leak out. When that happens, your brain doesn't have enough fluid to keep it elevated, and so it is essentially dropped to the floor of the skull and the pain gets really severe unless they do yet ANOTHER epidural procedure and inject some blood back into the spinal collumn.

So in total, I believe I had 6 epidural needles in my back over the course of 2 days and it wasn't very fun. Good thing I love my baby, even though he stayed up until 4 a.m. his first night home

:(