Reid's Birth Story

This is going to be quite a long post, so bear with me :)

It started at about 3:45 am on Wednesday morning.  I woke up with some intense pain in my abdomen, but didn't want to assume labor pains because Eric and Reilly had just been sick with the flu.  I said a little prayer that went something like this "Lord, please let me know if this is the baby or just the flu."  No joke - not even a minute later a baby toy in the basement played it's little jingle.  This toy is in the waaay back room of the basement on the top shelf of a storage cabinet.  It's motion-activated and there is no way our fat cat jumped that high to rub against it.  I took this as my sign and decided to wake up Eric and call my mom.  Because of the speed of Reilly's delivery she thought it was best if we went in and at least got things checked out.  We called our daycare provider and dropped Reilly off by 5 am.

I was having the intense pains all the way to the hospital, and they seemed regular - like contractions.  I still didn't want to rule out the flu bug because Eric complained of this cramping over the weekend, too.  A resident checked me when we got to the hospital at 6 am and I was only dilated to 2 cm and the monitors weren't picking up my pain as contractions.  I was bummed - as much as I didn't think it was labor, I really wanted to be.  They decided to monitor me until one of the midwives could come check me at 8.  When Laura checked I was miraculously at 5 cm.  We weren't going home after all! :)

At 11ish I made no progress and really wasn't in much pain.  That was a blow.  I wanted to feel something.  To know I was in labor like with Reilly.  We walked the halls and chatted a lot with the nurses.  I forgot to mention my mom made it to the hospital at about 7 am and I was so happy to have her with Eric and I through this process.

The nurses moved us to a room with a jet tub so I could soak.  This was around 2 pm.  That was when things started to change.  My occasional weak contraction turned to more regular, strong ones.  The tub was comforting, but I started to get cold and my body must have known what was coming.  My mom said that most moms who leave the tub start to feel miserable soon after.  This was exactly what happened.

My contractions started to get so regular and strong that I asked for an epidural.  The anesthesiologist was great, but I wanted to scream at him when he walked into my room and had forgotten the consent form needed to administer the epidural.  Imagine excruciating pain while waiting five minutes which seemed like forever all for a stinkin' piece of paper!  I signed.  He poked.  I figured life would be good.

Not so much.  This is where the labor progressed exactly like Reilly's.  The epidural barely began to kick in when I felt the urge to push.  My midwife checked me and said the baby was basically crowning.  Three minutes of painful pushing later, my second beautiful baby boy was here.  Reid Thomas weighed 8 pounds even and was 19 3/4" long.  I couldn't believe his mop of blonde hair.  So different from his big brother!

Our first few hours were spent with Grandparents and a totally disinterested big brother.  Reilly was not the center of attention and this was not okay with him.  He got a couple presents and all the cookies and milk he wanted, but didn't want anything to do with his new baby brother.

The first night went well.  Reid woke up a couple times to eat, but was super sleepy otherwise.  The next day my parent's brought Reilly back and we visited for a while before a certain grumpy two-year-old needed to go home for a nap.  Eric worked that day, so I spent the next few hours resting and loving my new baby.

We planned to be discharged after 24 hours so I started to get Reid ready to go home.  I changed his diaper and outfit.  The only time he cries is when one of these two things is happening, so when he started screaming I wasn't alarmed.  Suddenly, though, his faced turned gray-blue and it looked like he wasn't breathing.  A nurse was in my room to take my blood pressure and when I showed him to her she immediately put him in his crib and whisked him away to the NICU.  I started crying.  Here I am, all by myself, and my sweet baby was having some major health complications.

The nurses were very reassuring and checked on me after just a couple minutes.  They put oxygen on Reid and his color came back right away.  We decided to have him spend the night in the NICU so he could be monitored and figure out what happened.  I visited him a few times throughout the night, and by morning he was healthy as the minute he arrived.  The neonatologist who ran the tests said everything looked perfect and it could have just been a fluke.

I made Eric work Friday, too.  There was really nothing he could do and we had already lost 2 days' pay that week.  At 11 am it was finally time to go home!  I drove myself home (which I thought nothing of), but apparently it's not common - at all.  I must have a lot of my mom in me because it just seemed like the practical thing to do.

When I got home, Reilly was sleeping and my mom was hanging out, but had to leave.  It was weird to have my first minutes as a mom of two in a quiet house.  That changed as soon as Reilly woke up.  He was really confused why Grandma wasn't there anymore, and still not impressed by this new baby in his life.  It took some coaxing, but each encounter gets a little better.  I would not by any means say Reilly is a doting, gentle big brother.  We'll get there.

Reid has already been an incredible addition to our family.  He is a super baby and only cries when he's getting his diaper or clothes changed.  Being a mom the second time around has proved to be a pretty easy transition.  I'm not talking the "mother of two" part yet, because I won't experience my first day of that until tomorrow.  I guess I'm referring to the caring of a newborn.  I've done this before.  I survived.  And miraculously, so did he!  Eric has been a great help by taking Reilly outside and spending lots of time with him.