Reagan's Birthday

On March 14th at 1:30am, I was woken by contractions. They were strong enough to wake me, but weren't super hard contractions. They were still at the point where they felt like bad menstrual cramps. By 3:30am, I woke the hubs and we were on our way to the hospital with my mom. We got there and they stuffed me into the triage room and left me there, like an airplane in a holding pattern, for hours. I'm not exaggerating. I was there for 12 hours before they moved me to my own room.

The thing is, they couldn't measure my contractions so the nurse didn't believe me. The hubs was so annoyed and argued with the nurse about it. My face was contorted in pain and tears were brought to my eyes, but they couldn't find the contractions on their machine. The nurse actually told the hubs that I wasn't having them. Nice, huh? This, by the way, is the same thing that happened during my last pregnancy...they just couldn't measure them (even at the end when they were the hardest, they weren't showing on the machine). For whatever reason, though, they decided to keep me.

By 11:30am, the contractions started getting harder. I spent my time either lying in bed or walking around the birthing pavilion. Walking was good, by as the contractions got stronger they stopped me in my tracks in the middle of the hall - where I put on a show for the expecting parents taking a tour of the birthing pavilion. I wonder if I scared any of them?

By 5:00pm I was in my own room. The lead resident came in and checked my cervix. There was absolutely no change. I was blown away by this because the contractions were so strong - how could I have not progressed? The same thing happened with Little Man...I never got passed 4 without them breaking my water.

They decided they would break my water, but I opted for an epidural first. The best doctor in the planet came in with his numbing drugs and did his magic. He gave me a spinal first, which was supposed to provide immediate relief and last an hour, then did the epidural. The only thing is, the spinal and epidural only served to make my legs numb. It didn't numb the contractions. The happy doctor said it was normal for that to happen if the baby's head was deep in the pelvis. Great - just what I wanted - another birth without the luxury of numbing medication.

Another resident came in with the lead resident and a med student a few minutes after the happy doctor left. They checked my cervix again and I was at a 7! What you know...I did it on my own! Maybe my body just needed to relax and the spinal and epidural did just that for me. It was then, that they decided to break my water. That was at 7:48pm. The docs left after they poked that little hook in there and broke the bag of water. My nurse (a shift change had taken place and the nurse from heaven had shown up - Mary Ann) stayed in the room. A few minutes following the breaking of the water, I needed to push and needed to push right then. The nurse got the residents in there and called for the attending. At 8:08pm, just 20 minutes following the breaking of the water, Reagan (pronounced like the president's name) was born. I pushed through 3 contractions and out she came. I gotta say, it wasn't that bad. The hardest part were the contractions and feeling them so strongly.

The attending strolled in about 5 minutes after Reagan was born, saw that it had happened (hey, thanks for coming in - further proof that doctors don't really do much during the whole prenatal visit and delivery thing) and left. The residents and med student stayed in the room and cleaned things up (delivered the placenta, massaged out blood clots and stitched me up).

We stayed in the hospital until Sunday evening, but were ready to go by Saturday night. It's so boring there!I posted a ton of pictures on our family's photo blog. Check them out!