Our not-so-little bunddle of joy arrived on April 17 at 7:49 a.m. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 7 ounces and was 22 3/4 inches long. (Just slightly larger than his older brother was at birth). Here's our story...

On Easter Sunday I tried to encourage Ryan to get the show on the road by taking a long walk in our neighborhood with my mom. During our walk, Ryan settled in on my sciatic nerve and nothing I tried seemed to dislodge him. By Monday night, I was unable to sleep because the pain was so intense. Tuesday morning I went in to see one of the midwives and informed her that I wanted one of two things to happen: either give me some drugs to dull the pain OR induce the baby. I had a feeling that this baby was already large since his brother had been born 2 weeks early and weighed 9 pounds+. The midwife insisted that since my blood pressure, etc was OK, she saw no need for induction. I finally insisted on speaking with a doctor and am really glad that I did. The doctor suggested that I try taking Percoset for 24 hours and if that didn't work, we would schedule induction ASAP.

Well, needless to say, the percoset didn't work and I called back Wednesday morning to get my induction scheduled. I had heard all the horror stories about how painful labor would be if induced but I figured that it wouldn't be worse than the pain I was already in. The hospital was overflowing with people in labor and I was told to come in Thursday evening for induction on Friday morning.

After I arrived Thursday night, I was given cervidil to ripen my cervix. Usually they leave this in for 12 hours but they had to remove mine after 1 hour because I started having contractions. They gave me some more percoset and a sleeping pill and I managed to get 4.5 hours of sleep before contractions started again about 4:30 a.m. I got up and had a shower, the contractions stopped, and the pitocin drip was started about 6:00 a.m. By 6:30 I was having major contractions and asked them to turn off the drip. The nurse checked and said I was 2-3 centimeters dilated. I immediately asked for her to call the anesthesiologist so that he could get the epidural started. BIG PROBLEM: 7 a.m. is shift change time and she took her sweet time calling. By 7:00 a.m. I'm telling my husband to GET THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST HERE NOW because I was having serious back to back contractions with no chance to breathe in between. The doc finally arrived about 7:20 and assured me that by 7:35 I would be feeling no pain.

At 7:30 I informed everyone in the room that Ryan was crowning and I needed to push. (That's right: 2 to 10 centimeters in one hour). Then everyone began to really scramble. They didn't have time to convert the labor bed into a delivery bed so the labor nurse and one of the midwives had to hold my legs while I pushed. Unfortunately, the midwife holding one of my legs got beeped and had to go see another patient and asked my husband to hold that leg. This is the guy who almost passed out when he gave blood to get our marriage license!! Anyway, he said it was all he could do not to pass out but somehow he managed. At 7:49 a.m. Ryan emerged, a bit blue and bruised from his rapid delivery but otherwise healthy. After delivery, the epidural kicked in and I was feeling no pain when I received 2 stitches to close a small tear.

We came home from the hospital on Sunday and everyone is doing great. Breastfeeding is going well now after some initial difficulties. For anyone who is planning to breastfeed, please remember this when you are in the hospital: All of our nurses kept trying to get us to give Ryan formula while we were in the hospital (his blood sugar level is borderline, he's losing weight, etc). We refused and even "created" times when he breastfed "well" for their records. I am convinced that if we had let him spend any amount of time in the nursery that wasn't absolutely necessary, they would have given him formula and greatly increased our initial feeding difficulties. Stick to your guns and do whatever is necessary to refrain from using formula.

Diana (due 4/30 but thankfully 2 weeks early)