good news.

Baby Ryan is here!


Ryan Joseph Reif
06/28/09 at 5:55am
7 lbs. 7 oz.
20.25 inches long

Saturday 6/28 was a great day. Our friends Jeff and Danielle and Dave and Jean came into Philly and we all went out to dinner. We sat outside, had questionable service at the restaurant (that's for you, D), and had a wonderful time hanging out. Ben was a total champ at dinner even though we weren't seated until past his bedtime. I think it had something to do with the fact that we were with two ladies he was trying to impress.

We ate and all came back to our house. Ben went to bed without incident. We had dessert and everybody else had a few drinks, just relaxing. The guys did a lot of reminiscing and we all did a lot of laughing. They left around 11pm and Chris and I got into bed at around 11:30, because SNL was just starting. I was grumbling about how big I was and Chris was wondering when we'd get to meet Ryan, when my water broke.

My water only broke a little bit with Ben - when we got to the hospital the doctor had to make sure it was really broken - but with Ryan, let's just say that Chris and I both got to witness the full effect. We couldn't stop laughing. Hey, it's important to have a sense of humor, right?

Chris' parents came over and Pop-Pop stayed at our house with Ben that night. I had called the hospital to tell them my water broke, and my doctor, Dr. Cannon, said that my contractions might start 'within a few hours'... but instead they started within a few minutes of me hanging up with him.

We started to make our way to the hospital with Chris' mom. We had already called family members by that point and my mom and Kevin were on their way to meet us there.

That night was a night wherein I ate lots of words that I'd spoken earlier. I think it's important to admit these things and have a good laugh at myself.

Let me explain. When I'd watch Baby Story on TLC, I'd roll my eyes at women who were FREAKING OUT in pain at only 1 cm. I was uncomfortable, but with Ben I arrived at the hospital at 4 cm and was made to wait until 8cm to get my epidural. Like a fool for the past almost-three years, I've been holding onto that fact like it's a badge of honor or something.

Another thing that I always 'wondered' about (read: scoffed at) was why some women screamed and cried on the show even after receiving their epidural. After I got mine with Ben, I was smiling, happy, and felt GOOD.

But I was in pain when we got to the hospital at 1am. I was thinking for sure, with the contractions I was having, the fact that they were no more than 5 minutes apart, the fact that I was in significant pain, that I'd be at least 3cm. Nope, just 1cm. I was bummed.

They checked me into a room and started to monitor me. I was in so much pain, but still not dilated enough for them to give me an epidural. I felt every contraction and squeezed Chris' hand so hard with each one that I'm surprised he still has fingers on his left hand. The doctor decided that I needed to be put to sleep for a little while until I dilated to at least 3cm, when they could give me an epidural.

Right after my mom and Kevin arrived, I got an injection through my IV. I could feel the medication coursing through my veins, literally, and pretty quickly started to feel like this. I was fighting sleep because I felt bad that it was the middle of the night, everyone had rushed to be there in the hospital with me, and here I was going to take a snooze. But I was so tired that I had a hard time speaking. So I slept.


I'm not really sure about the specifics of what happened next, but I remember waking up at around 4am and being in even more pain. Everyone was still in the room with me and the nurse examined me and I was about 3 or 4 cm. Nobody could really figure out why I was in so much pain, but being examined was pretty rough. In addition to that they were having a hard time finding Ryan's heartrate. Not that they couldn't find a heartbeat, but they had a hard time putting his monitor thing in a good enough position to get a consistent reading.

They made my mom and Chris' mom leave the room for the epidural and they made Chris sit down on the couch in the room while they prepped me for the epidural.

I got the epidural and it didn't work. First the person stuck me in a vein, so she had to re-do it, but after I got the epidural it became apparent that it wasn't working. My contractions were still unusually painful - and I was in so much pain that Dr. Cannon didn't want to examine me - or he tried but I was in too much pain. At some point, the epidural started to work enough for him to examine me, and at that time he realized that I was 7cm with face presentation.

This is when things started to get blurry - I noticed my mom and Chris' mom hadn't been allowed to come back in the room, and Dr. Cannon said we were going to have to do an emergency c-section. It turns out that face presentation is something that is pretty rare, and Ryan was not in good shape now and would be in even worse shape if I tried to give birth without a c-section.

Basically, rather than being head down and top-of-head first while I was laboring and contracting, Ryan was head down but face first. With every contraction, his face was getting smushed. A regular delivery would have put him, his face, and his neck through too much trauma. That, combined with the fact that they couldn't get a good read on his heartrate, caused Dr. Cannon to make the quick decision.

They wheeled me out of my room and into the OR so quickly that they left Chris in the room and gave him clothes to change into. He asked Dr. Cannon if he had time to tell our moms what was going on, and he said that Chris did but he'd better hurry. They got me in and prepped me, and Chris came in. He remembers the doctor saying, 'we have a baby' but after that there was really nothing going on for several (long) minutes.

Chris had been filming from behind the curtain with me - because he didn't want to watch or see anything, he filmed my hand holding his. I must have asked 15 times why Ryan wasn't crying, and why nobody was answering me. It's weird to watch actually. At some point I tried to make a joke and asked Dr. Cannon to give me a tummy tuck while he was there, but I was so drugged and my teeth were chattering so much that who knows what even came out of my mouth. We did hear a little cry, and we found out later that they'd tried to intubate him because he was so swollen and they were trying to help him breathe.

The nurses called Chris over and before they let him see Ryan, one of them told him that he 'wouldn't always look like this, and by tomorrow he would probably look completely different'... and when she turned Ryan's face over, Chris could see how swollen and bruised he was. His skin color was weird because of the bruising and his mouth and lips were huge - so swollen that words can't really do it justice.

Chris came back over and sat with me. He had a funny look in his eyes. I was drugged up but I do remember looking at him and I knew he wasn't smiling - it was a look of concern, maybe fear, but at the time I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I'm amazed every day by my husband. He's just a good, kind person and a man who I can always count on. I lean on him far too much, to be honest - so much that I feel like he probably grows tired of being the 'strong one' all the time. So when I think back to being there on the table, hearing him say, 'he's a little banged up, the swelling will go down' and other things to reassure me, I think about how hard it must have been for him to sit there and once again be the strong one. But he was, and he is my hero.

I don't remember much after seeing Ryan. He was definitely in bad shape - but when I saw him perhaps I was still too drugged up to process it the way Chris had had to. I think that was a blessing in disguise.

I woke up in the recovery room with Chris by my side. By that point he'd gone down to the nicu with the nurses and Ryan and had come back to see me in recovery.

* * * * * * * *
Ryan's up and ready to eat and have a diaper change right now so I'll have to write more later. Like I said on this blog way back when Ben was born, I'm certain that play-by-play accounts of Ryan's birth story can probably be a little tedious and perhaps boring, but I'm writing all of this down so that one day Ryan can read it.

Looking for pictures to post, too. I'll hopefully have more to post later. I'm still not sure what I'll post - the pictures of Ryan from when he was first born are hard for me to look at. I have to talk to Chris about it. But here are two more - the first from today and the second from when Ryan was a few days old.