Welcome to the world Ryan!

April 8th 2009 - Ryan's Birthday!

We were told to be at the hospital by 5 am for the induction, but unfortunately the hospital was moving slow and we weren't taken back to a room until 6:15. My OB is awesome and since I was already 6 cm dilated she wanted me to have my epidural before she broke my water or started the pitocin. We all thought that Ryan would be out rather quickly after she broke my water but Ryan had other ideas and wanted to be different from the other kids! I finally got my epidural around 8:30 and they started the pitocin around 9:30. My body didn't want to start contracting right away so we sat around waiting and waiting some more while the pitocin was slowly increased. Eric and I spent the time playing on our computers and watching tv.

Annoyed that it was taking so long to get things started

Playing on my computer after getting my epidural

Finally around noon my contractions started getting strong enough to get things moving along. By 12:45 I was almost fully dilated and just waiting for my contractions to get closer together. By 1:15 I was ready to go, but my doctor was in finishing up a surgery so we had to wait. Finally at about 1:40 they were all set up and ready for Ryan. After just 2 contractions and 8 pushes Ryan made his way into the world at 1:47pm.

After Ryan was born he started having trouble breathing and began grunting and panting. We hoped that it would go away quickly but after they took him to the newborn nursery and did his first bath he hadn't stopped. They watched him for a little while in the nursery and then decided that he needed to go to the NICU. Of course they made the decision that he needed to go as soon as my mom got there with Drew and Sarah. So as they were letting me see him before they took him to the NICU we got a quick picture of Drew and Ryan.

That afternoon we made several trips down to the NICU to see Ryan. He was still breathing fast all afternoon and evening and continued making the whining/grunting noise. We never thought to bring the camera down to the NICU on any of those visits so we don't have any pictures from the rest of the first day.

On our first trip down to the NICU we were told that they were starting antibiotics on him and that he would be there at least 3 days but more than likely it would be 5-7 days before he was realeased. I couldn't believe that my poor little man would be away from me for that long.