Well, week 38 was a big one! Ryan arrived on Sunday, July 12 @ 3:23 pm. I tried to go to bed Saturday night and couldn't sleep, so I stayed up watching the lightning and rubbing my belly. At 1:30 am I headed to the bathroom, and guess what? My water broke! I immediately called the doctor, and he said we should go to the hospital. By 3 am we were settled into a labor and delivery room with monitors on my belly and contractions strengthening. The nurse gave me medication to try to help me sleep, but it only made me feel drunk and let me sleep for about 5 or 6 minutes in between contractions. Actually, I got the medicine twice, because it was taking forever for me to get far along enough to get an epidural. Then the doctors gave me petocin to start speeding things up ... and wow, did they ever. Before I knew it I was getting the epidural and I was 9 cm dialated by noon. Jason called everyone, thinking it would be no time before he arrived. Soon it was time to push, and boy, did I push. Ryan was a little stubborn about coming out, and it took 2.5 hours of pushing to get him to finally come out! The doctors even put a monitor on the top of his head while he was still inside to make sure he wasn't in distress. Finally he arrived at 3:23 in the afternoon, crying and beautiful. By 9:30 pm Ryan had met both sets of grandparents, Aunt Courtney, Aunt Lindsay, Uncle Bryan, Great Aunt Linda, second cousin Megan, and his Great Grandparents and switched into room 4112.
We spent Monday in the hospital and came home Tuesday afternoon. While we were in the hospital, Ryan met even more people, including Aunt Laura and Uncle Mike, Bill and Becky, Joe, Great Uncle Rick, Great Aunt Chris, and Regina. It was a tough stay between all the visitors, doctors and nurses coming in and out, and Ryan getting up and down every few hours. During one of his exams the doctors discovered that Ryan was "tongue-tied" -- the skin that holds your tongue to the bottom of your mouth should be in the middle of our tongue, but in Ryan's case it was all the way at the front of his tongue. This made it impossible for him to breast feed, and difficult for him to even bottle feed. Hence, we were at the pediatrician Wednesday to get a referral to an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. Later Wednesday afternoon we went to the ENT, who stuck a HUGE needle in his tongue to numb it. Then he snipped the bottom of his tongue so it wasn't attached to the front anymore. It was so scary!
So all in all, Ryan had a scary tongue-snipping experience, got his first Hepatitis B shot, had blood taken from his heel for his jaundice test, was circumcised, and got stuck in the birth canal, all in his first three days. Poor guy. Luckily, now he's settled at home. I still can't believe he's here, out of my belly. He's eating about every two hours, which makes Jason grumpy at 2 and 4 in the morning. :-) Overall, we are thoroughly enjoying being Mommy and Daddy. It's a tough adjustment for everyone (especially the doggies and Daddy) but we will survive. We are very lucky Jason is home all summer, that's for sure.
So that's week 38! :-) Ryan will be a week old tomorrow ...
