Rykken Is Finally Here!

I am so relieved and proud to announce that Rykken has arrived. He is finally here and only 3 days late! I am so happy that I didn't have to wait until the 21st! Rykken made his appearance on August 16 at 8:32am. He was about as big as they estimated...he weighed in at 7lbs 12oz and 20.5in long. He has black hair and a ton of it! He is absolutly perfect in every way possible. He is completely healthy with a little bit of jaundice. Like I guessed, he is very laid back and calm...he loves to sleep during the day and play at night....hmmm....does that sound familiar from my some of my complaints from my pregnancy blogs :) His middle name came from my baby brother Kyler Luke. Those of you that know me well...know how special my brother is to me!

I know many of you are probably curious about my delivery...so here you go...all I can say is it was an adventure! I began having mild contractions Wed. August 13 (my due date) at about 6:45pm (thats when I started timing them anyway) I continued having them inconsistently anywhere from 12-8 minutes all the way through Wed. night into Thursday. I went ahead and went to work Thursday morning (Crazy I know) and left at half day, but by the time I left work I was in a lot of pain...but they were still just too inconsistent in timing and duration to call or head to the hospital. Now let me tell you about my contractions. All of my labor was back labor. I felt no front cramps, every contraction I had I felt in my back....even though they were about 12 minutes apart they still were almost unbearable. My mom went ahead and drove down Thursday night to stay with me, even though I was in denial and kept telling her it was just false labor and not to bother driving down. I made it through Thursday night, and mind you...I hadn't slept since Tuesday night because of the contractions, try sleeping and every 10-12 minutes being jerked up out of bed with pain. On Friday morning about 6am I had the first sign of a bloody show. I was so happy I almost started crying and told my mom that I really was in labor, because I just kept denying it before I started bleeding. My contractions were still inconsistent about 8-6 minutes apart. I called my doctors office and Murphy's Law...my doctor was out of town. They told me since there was no one to check my progress at the office to just go ahead and go to the hospital and they would check me there. About 9am I headed to the hospital, they checked me and I was only 1cm dialated and 80% effaced! Now it wasn't much...but since I had been told 2 days before that, that I was not dialated or effaced at all, I felt like it was positive progress. They sent me home with Ambien to try to get some sleep and get my body to relax to try to get the process started. Taking Ambien was the worst experience of my life! I was out of it before my mom could get me home...she had to practically drag me into my apartment and put me to bed. I slept for about 4 hours until I woke up hallucinating and crying and in the worst pain I had ever been in. (Not to scare those that are expecting their first babies....I don't think regular labor pains are as intense as the back labor I experienced....or maybe I am just a cry baby!) So I headed back to the hospital and was admitted at around 7pm so that they could start me on a pain medication IV. They started the IV checked me again and I had progressed to between 2-3 cm and was 90% effaced. After about 15 minutes of getting the IV drip and getting admitted my water broke naturally. Everything progressed pretty quickly from there on out. About 4 hours after my water broke I got my epidural and was completely dialated in about 5 hours after receiving the epidural. So not counting the two days I was having contractions before I was admitted to the hospital, I labored for about 9 hours. I started pushing at 5am on Sat. morning and pushed for 3 hours. The reason I was having back labor is because Rykken's head was turned side ways in my pelvis. The nurse and the doctor both tried to turn his head several times, but it wasn't happening. The doctor gave me two options after 3 hours of pushing with no progress. He could either go in with forceps and try to turn Rykken's head and help pull him out...or a c-section. He did not think with my size that the forceps would be a safe alternative and that it would be riskier and a harder, longer recovery for me than a c-section. So along with the doctor's guidance I agreed to a c-section. I agreed to the c-section around 8am and by 8:32 my little man was here! While the doctor was finishing the surgery he informed me that even if we would have gone ahead with the forceps that it wouldn't have worked, so the c-section was definetly the right choice. His head couldn't progress down into my pelvis due to two protruding pelvic bones and this is also why they didn't have any luck trying to turn his head. He was stuck! For the c-section they over medicated me to make sure I would be numb enough for the surgery with just the epidural with out having to insert a spinal and they ended up completely numbing me from the neck down. It was one heck of an epidural! Once I was in recovery they brought the baby to me so I could see him, but I couldn't hold him because I had no movement in my arms and hands, so he got to lay on me for about 10 minutes until they took him back to the nursery. I didn't get to see him again until around 11am that morning when I finally made it to my permenent recovery room. It took me almost all day on Sat. to get feeling and movement back in my limbs. My legs took the longest and I really didn't have complete movement back until Sunday morning, I was really scared I was going to be paralized or something....but nope...all the feeling eventually came back. I was discharged on Monday...a day early because I was recoverying so well and so I was home by about 1pm on Monday. YAY! Overall things went really smooth, and I am so grateful I had a relatively low complicated labor and delivery and that Rykken is healthy! He is worth all of it!