Reagan's Arrival! 

Reagan's Arrival!

We left for the hospital around 9am on December 8th; I had been having regular contractions for over a week, but part of my cervix was refusing to efface, so the contractions weren’t helping much. When we got to the hospital, the midwife applied cervical gel, which got labor going a little more regularly. By noon it hurt for me to walk, but the midwife advised that walking would help things along, so I would power walk with Katie around the labor and delivery floor, one lap, before collapsing onto the bed. Chris kept making me laugh, and I would laugh and then scream at him because it hurt to laugh. As the day wore on, he kept making me laugh to the point that I would be laughing AND crying at the same time from the pain of laughing. He said, “This is it! This is what we’ll do; you can just laugh the baby out.” My mood continued to be somewhat light until sometime in the mid afternoon when the combination of a distressing phone call (who calls a woman on her cell phone knowing full well that she’s in labor???) and a pushy nurse just pushed my mood into dangerous territory. Later in the afternoon the midwife gave me a sleeping pill because I wasn’t progressing and she wanted me to try to get some sleep. Chris and Katie started getting a little frustrated with me because I kept trying to fight it off and wanted to keep talking through the haze of the sleeping pill. I remember that at one point I started crying, “You guys are mad at me!” Around 10pm, the midwife checked me and said that it would definitely not happen tonight. Katie had only arranged to be off from work for one day, so I felt that Chris should take her home so she could go to work and then he should sleep at our house instead of at the hospital. He seemed a little uneasy about this, but the midwife assured us that I was not progressing. They moved me to a room with a better bed in a quieter area so I could get some sleep. Around midnight, I woke up in PAIN. The nurse came in and said I was in active labor, but I refused to call Chris because I felt that maybe I was wrong, that maybe I was exaggerating, and I didn’t want to wake him. By 2am I was yelling out prayers to patron saints of childbirth with every contraction, but for some reason continued to refuse to wake Chris. Why on earth the nurses didn’t just call him and realize that I was too compromised to think clearly, is beyond me. At 4 am I finally called Chris and said something like, “I don’t know if I’m really in labor, but I can’t talk, because it hurts too much!” Then I hung up on him. That poor man; imagine getting that phone call at 4am. The nurse then came in and said that it was time to go back to the birthing room, and I kept insisting that I thought I might be exaggerating, so maybe she should check me. She said, “I am not going to check you. You are VERY VERY definitely in active labor.” I wasn’t convinced, and then yelled, “Oh, no, I’m going to throw up!” And she replied, “I think you’re almost ready to push.” When we got to the birthing room, she finally checked me and said, “You can’t get into the tub yet, because baby is going to be born as soon as you get in there, and your midwife isn’t back yet.” The midwife had gone home to get some sleep. I started yelling at the nurse, saying, “Let me in that tub! You better let me in that tub!” A few more contractions passed, and I was in the middle of saying, “That is IT! I am done with this! Get me something! Knock me out!” when I saw Roxie from the corner of my eye. She said, “Colleen, I’m here. As soon as this contraction is over, you can get in the tub.” After I got in the tub, I labored there for a while, still yelling out prayers to obscure saints, which I think scared the nurse a little bit. Chris dashed in and changed into his swimsuit quickly and then hopped into the tub with me. At one point, I put my hand down and said, “I think I feel the head,” and the midwife said, “No, that’s the amniotic sac; you have a bulging bag of water.” So I kept pushing till I felt it burst, and everyone laughed because I was yelling, “Wow! It popped!” After that, I could touch the baby’s head and began pushing in earnest. During one of the last contractions, something felt different and hurt a lot more and I started getting a little out of control and yelling. Finally I could feel the head start to come out, and the midwife let me guide her head out myself. After she checked to make sure there was no cord around her neck, I got to pull her out by myself, which was really neat! Then I held her up and said something like, “Look at this! I made this baby come out all by myself!”
After I got out of the tub, the nurse said I was bleeding a little too much. They put me on the bed and I began to hemorrhage. I wasn’t too upset, though, because I was floating in and out of consciousness. We have a tradition of calling my aunt and uncle and my grandparents from the labor room right after every one of our kids’ births, so while the nurses were working on me, I decided to call even though I kept falling asleep. Later that night, I had to call to find out what I said because I only vaguely remember speaking to anyone! Finally they decided to set the baby up to nurse, because it would stimulate contractions to slow the bleeding. We have a really funny picture of Reagan nursing with me completely unconscious. After they slowed the bleeding, I woke up but was still a little confused and more than a little belligerent. I was annoyed that they wouldn’t let me get out of the bed and on with my day, so after the nurse left the room, I hopped out of bed before Chris could stop me and decided to take a shower. I went into the bathroom and then I remember thinking, “wow, I think that bang was my head hitting something!” LOL Chris said I yelled to him, “hey, I think I’m falling!” right before I passed out. So the lesson of the day was that it is occasionally in your best interest to listen to medical personnel. Chris carried me back to the bed and got the nurses and I was fine in a few hours. After that, our hospital stay went incredibly smoothly, and Reagan proved to be a great nurser. Connor, Ror and Riley Kate came to visit in the afternoon on the day she was born and gave her plenty of hugs and kisses.
We’re all home now, and while Ms. Reagan seems to want to nurse literally every hour round the clock, we’re settling in nicely and look forward to showing her off soon!