Rylee Paige

She's here! Okay, so she's been here for almost 4 weeks already. I am a little behind on posting. Here is the story of her arrival.

It's Saturday, September 5th, our due date. David and I sleep in with the thought that this could very well be our last weekend to sleep in for a very long time. Around 6 pm we leave to attend our friends' wedding reception in Minneapolis. On the drive there I have this feeling of tightness in my belly. Well, that felt a little weird. I didn't think too much of it though. Then about 15 minutes later I feel it again. David feels my belly and says that this has to be a contraction. Sure enough this feeling keeps coming about every 15 minutes. We visit with the happy couple. There is actually another couple at the reception that is due today too. Wouldn't it be funny if one of us went into labor?! David talks me into heading for home. I felt fine, but was thinking that I really didn't want my water to break at this reception. Not my idea of a good time!

We stopped to pick up some Culvers on the way home. I was starving. (Too bad I threw it all up later!) We got home and changed into comfortable clothes and called the doctor. He said to come in once the contractions were 5-8 minutes apart. They were still about 15 minutes apart at this point. Eventually they started getting closer together and more painful. Once they really started hurting, I was all about heading for the hospital. They were about 8 minutes apart then. We checked into the hospital at about midnight.

All of the rooms were full when we got there. It was a busy day for babies! We had to wait a bit for a room. We finally got a room and made ourselves comfortable. They weren't sure they would even keep me there at this point since my water had not broken yet. The contractions kept coming and were really strong. They eventually starting coming about every 4 minutes, so they finally decided to keep me there. We were really going to have this baby! At about 3 am they checked me and I was only at 3 cm. They asked if I wanted an epidural and I was all for it at that point. So they gave it to me then. I was pleased that they gave it to me so soon, but unfortunately it slowed my labor down. My contractions slowed down and lessened in intensity.

Due to this new turn of events, they started to give me Pitocin to get labor going again. They turned me to one side and the baby's heartbeat dropped. I ended up getting oxygen in order to get more air to her. Finally her heartrate went back up. In the meantime, they had stopped the pitocin. They were not sure the baby would be able to handle the stronger contractions, so they slowly started the pitocin again. She was fine after that. Apparently she just didn't like that position! The contractions started coming faster and stronger, but I didn't feel a thing, which was awesome! I was at 6 cm and then about an hour later, the doctor came in and said things looked good. I asked, "What does good mean?" He said, "It's a 10. We can start pushing now." Woohoo!

I ended up pushing for 2 1/2 hours. Sometime in there, he determined that the baby was face up. He got her turned around and just as we were celebrating that, she turned herself back to being face up. Apparently she didn't like that position either! Due to her position it was going to be very hard for me to push her out myself. After 2 hours of pushing the doctor gave me the options: 1. Keep pushing. He would let me push for no more than 3 hours. 2. Use forceps to help guide her out. Vacuum would be another option but he did not like using that. 3. C-section. I really wanted to try to push her out myself, so I pushed for another 1/2 hour. At that point I was pretty exhausted and he said we could try the forceps at any time. I was ready to try it at that point.

So just after noon, the doctor pulled while I pushed and we were able to get her out. I was totally overwhelmed with emotions once she was out. We put her on my chest right away and I just cried. She was so amazing! No words can describe it.

Rylee Paige Roark came into the world at 12:14 pm on Sunday, September 6th. She was 8 lbs. 10 oz. and 21 1/4 inches long. She had a head of dark hair and was absolutely beautiful!