this picture was taken on the fourth day that we were in the hospital when he was born and it's my favorite picture that has ever been taken.
we went in on to be induced at midnight on friday and i had never been so scared in my entire life. i had never been in the hospital before. i had never had an IV before. i have never had surgery before. that day i kept busy with sewing and watching christmas movies. anytime that i wasn't doing something i would start to cry. i knew that things weren't going to go smoothly. i knew that i was going to have a c-section. i knew that this was going to be quite the event. call it intuition.
after things got underway, i went 8 hours before getting the epidural. i put in an effort and i was exhausted and done with the whole experience. getting the epidural was easy. way easier than getting an IV, surprisingly. however, i wasn't a fan of the total numbness that the epidural caused. it was quite annoying to need people to move me around in bed.
after the epidural, i don't remember much. i remember it seeming like an eternity for anything to happen. i remember being exhausted. i slightly remember the intense pain when baby got lower and caused so much lower back pain. at one point his heart beat dropped and that was terribly scary.
then after 21 hours of labor, they made the decision to do a c-section and that's when the real tears started. i was completely terrified. thankfully i had a great anesthesiologist who talked me through everything. i remember being scared that the nurses who put me onto all of the different beds were going to drop me. i remember when they strapped my arms down and how uncomfortable i felt from that. i remember how it took a while for Ryder to cry and how terrified i was. everyone was rushing around. i remember how many people where in that OR. there seemed like hundreds. i remember seeing baby for the first time and feeling like he was a complete stranger. i remember when tyler left to follow baby and i was alone. i remember when they pulled down the curtain and i could see myself laying on the table and some blood. i wish that i could forget that sight.
ryder nathan was born on october 28th. i don't really remember when he was born, but it was somewhere between 8 and 9...i think. i remember looking at the clock to see what time it was, but i can't remember the time that it said.
while in the recovery room i shook from the medicine wearing off for a good hour. someone brought baby to me and i could barely hold him from being so weak. i was relieved to see that he was the cutest thing in the whole world.
i had a fever by this time and a nasty infection, which meant tons of antibiotics. the next day i was out of it. they are supposed to get you up 3 hours after surgery to walk, but i couldn't get up until 12 hours, because my fever made me so dizzy. i didn't see him at all that first day.
the second day i walked down to see him alone, because nothing was going to keep my from my baby. i remember seeing a girl walking and thinking that she was lucky to be walking so easily, without pain. i looked forward to the day that i could walk like that once again.
Ryder was in the NICU for four days due to my infection. he got antibiotics for two days. in those two days he didn't want to eat, so they kept him another day. then he had a breathing issue, so they kept him longer. it was rough, but i am thankful that he was in there for only that. he was an easy case for those nurses, since they deal with babies that stay in there for months fighting for their lives each day and only weigh 4 pounds.
the third and forth days i was in there all day. my nurses would have to come get me to get my antibiotics and to eat meals. that's one thing about nurses is they want you to eat all of the time. i was on so many pain meds that i wasn't hungry and was really annoyed by their insistence.
i was the only one on the floor without her baby. other moms would walk around with them and i would hear the babies cry. i would walk around with no baby and felt like everyone pitied me.
on the fifth night, we went home. it was time. i was done with nurses. i felt like i was in prison by the fourth day.
it wasn't a pleasant birth experience, but it gave me my lovely baby boy whom i love so much. i would go through it all over again for him.
having a kid really is a life altering experience and i couldn't imagine my life without him now. it's hard work all of the time, but it's totally worth the late nights and the early mornings. anytime that i feel discouraged by the whole mom experience all i have to do is see him smile and it renews my strength.
