August 20th, 2014

Happy Birthday Riley!!

Riley Arlora Stabler

7:14 pm

7 lbs 10 oz

21 inches long

Baby Riley arrived today!  What a wonderful but long day!!  

Contractions started last night at about 6:30, but they weren't really that bad but they were about five minutes apart.  Of course this was happening while I was teaching class - luckily I just did a circuit so I could just sort of teach and not actually participate.  So after going home, timing contractions and assessing the situation :)  We decided to go to sleep and see what was going to happen.  All throughout the night I had contractions about ten minutes apart but they weren't super strong.  Then after getting up and around in the morning they started getting much stronger and a little closer together so we decided it was time to get to the hospital.  Dan came over to watch Harper, we gave her a big hug and a kiss and headed off to the hospital.  When we arrived at about 10 we were at 4 cm - decent but still a long way to go.  So the next couple hours we spent hanging out, getting through contractions and being pricked like a pin cushion to get the IV in.  For some reason my veins do not like IV's - it took two people and 4 attempts before they finally got one in - something about having to many valves in my viens - who knows?  Any ways the contractions started getting pretty miserable at 4 or so and we were still only 5cm dilated - after trying my hardest to get through the miserable pain we decided it was time for an epidural.  Well of course the anesthesiologist had just gone into a heart surgery so it was going to be a while before we actually received the epidural.  So an hour or so later after miserable contractions I received the epidural.  It was like a break in the storm - I went from being miserable to being very calm and not feeling a thing.  That was not the case with the epidural with Harper - I still felt pain with Harper - with this epidural I felt great.  So I just closed my eyes and laid there for an hour or so until it was time to push.  Then not to long later beautiful Riley arrived!!