Our Baby Story

She's here! She's here!

For your joy, and my memory's sake, I wanted to share our birthing story...

On Monday, Rich and I went to the doctor for my 41 week appointment and found out I had still not progressed to a 2 or fully effaced (although I was at 90%). The doctor suggested induction, so we scheduled ourselves at the hospital for Wednesday.

Wednesday morning we were to call into the hospital at 4:30am to see if our 5:30am check in time was still available. My dear sweet husband woke up at 4 so that he could get himself ready and make the phone call and let me sleep as long as possible. The problem with this plan was, his alarm clock woke me up too, and once I was up, there was no getting back to sleep! To make it a little worse, the hospital asked us to wait until 6:30am, which meant another hour of anxiously waiting! It turned out perfect, I got dressed, had a snack, and completed a day of my Bible study!

The childcare center is no different than the rest of the hospital, we arrived at 6:30, got in our room around 7, and finally got pitocin started at 8am. (At this time, Dr. Mallory said I was dilated to 'a good 2'). I felt contractions start, but I considered them only a 1 or 2 on the pain scale. Dr. Mallory came back in at 10am, checked me again, and this time I was dilated to a 3! Yay for progress! With this he decided to go ahead and break my water to keep the progression rolling. From 10am to 11am I definitely felt my contractions getting stronger. I pegged them at a 4 on the pain scale for a while, and told the nurse and Rich that I would take the epidural when they hit a 5 (the nurse had been offering for a while, but I didn't want to be too big of a wimp!) I had my first '5' contraction sometime around 10:45 I believe, and decided I'd go through one more '5', then call the nurse. I had another one right away, so called the nurse and said, "Ok, I'll take that epidural now." She offered fentinal (sp?) to hold me over until I got the epidural, but I told her no, I was fine, I could handle the contractions. At this time she also turned my pitocin off as my contractions were way too close together (part of the reason they were more painful I think, I wasn't getting the relief between them). She left the room to order the epidural, and along came a '6', which brought the tears and then through me into a little emotional breakdown. (I had to have at least 1, right???) So the fentinal was ordered, and kicked in quickly, and very appreciated! The anesthesiologist came in and got the epidural going right around noon. (By the way, the nurse checked me right before the epidural and I was at a 4!) Just so you know, the epidural needle was the thing that I was the most scared of. People had told me that it hurt the most?!?! Those crazy people... all I felt was a little prick, it hurt less than a flu shot! (I realize this could be partly because of the shot of fentinal I had just had.) Anyway, epidural started working right away on the right side, so I laid on my left side for a good hour (and got in a little nap!) and it eventually brought complete relief. This was the 'glory' period. My girlfriend Kim came in, and her, Rich and I laughed and joked and had a great old time. At 2:00 I was dilated to a 6 and not feeling a thing! My mom and Rich's mom had been hanging out with us earlier in the day, and had left for lunch. They returned a bit before 4 I believe, and after about 5 minutes in the room, got kicked out so that I could be checked again. It's at this point that I need to stress, facial expressions and tone of voice say a thousand words! The nurse checked me and said, "Ohhh, you're... ready to go. You're at a 10 and baby at 2+." (I asked what that meant and she said, "well, 3+ is crowning"). Previous to her checking me, I had informed her that I was starting to feel the contractions a little bit again (about a pain level 2), but that I had pushed my 'easy button' for more epidural juice so no worries! I wasn't feeling any pressure, or the desire to push at all, so she said I could just keep relaxing and letting my body do the work on it's own until she called the doctor to see what he said. She called Dr. Mallory and he said, "Get her pushing!" Oh, another thing I should admit... I confessed to the nurse, "So I'm a little nervous about the pushing, I don't feel like I'm going to know how to do it or what I'm doing." She so graciously calmed my nerves and told me she'd walk me through everything so I had nothing to be nervous about, plus, it's just like pushing to go to the bathroom and I definitely know how to do that, so I'd be fine. Since Dr Mallory had ordered pushing, she had me take a deep breath, pull my legs up and do a 'practice push'. To which she said, "Ok, we're not going to do any more of that until Dr. Mallory gets here, you just relax, and I'm going to get the room ready. This is when nerves kicked in for both Rich and I. She left the room for a few minutes and so we took the opportunity to pray pray pray! Dr. Mallory arrived about 15 minutes later (at 4:20) and had me do another 'practice push'. To which he said, "Ok, that was really good", backed away, put on his gown and took apart the bed! I have a few things to say right now... pushing with an epidural is weird. I felt like my face was turning bright red from holding my breath, and my face was making a funny pushing face, but was I even pushing down there??? Also, Rich is the most amazing man in the world. All I wanted to do between pushes was gaze at him. He was encouraging, helpful, caring, ohhh... he was beyond words to me. Although I felt somewhat ridiculous pushing, it seemed to be working because after the first contraction of pushes, they had me reach down and feel all her hair!

Miss Ridley Kay Strotz was born at 4:35pm on February 9th. She weighed in at 6lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long. Rich and I are already so in love with her we don't know what to do with ourselves. I will share pictures soon, I promise!