It's my littlest baby boy's 3rd birthday today. How crazy that he's 3 already! The time has literally flown by, especially since he's always trying to be so much bigger than he is. I kind of feel bad for his 2's, since I have found myself thinking 'he's almost 3' for a good 6 months already. He always acts older and tries to do everything with Scooter all the time so it has been hard to remember that he was really only 2 for quite a while.
But Riley was a tiny baby not so long ago and I find myself thinking of the day he was born today, as most mothers do on their munchkin's birthdays. I know I am skipping over Scooter's birth story to get to Riley's, but that is just how the calendar is flowing. I will have to come back to Scooter later because today is Riley's day.
My due date for Riley was November 2nd and I had been extremely nervous through the second half of my pregnancy that my water would break while trick-or-treating with Tyler and Scooter. For some reason I didn't want him to be born on Halloween, but by the end I guess I wouldn't have cared either way. When you are full term, you are just ready and the day doesn't really matter. Dr. P (not the same doc as for Tyler, but I've had her for 5 years and LOVE her) has maintained through both my 2nd and 3rd pregnancies that since Tyler was 8/5 and almost a full week early and because I had the challenges pushing that occured for his birth, she doesn't ever want me going over 40 weeks. She isn't taking any risks that I would have to try and deliver a 9 pound baby if I don't have to. I used to think I would rather wait than be induced, but really by the end of a pregnancy I don't really care any more and am kind of grateful that I don't have to be way overdue before delivery.
So as we crept towards my due date, Dr. P kept checking my progress at every appointment and I kept having contractions. By the end they were not Braxton-Hicks, but the real thing - just never consistent enough to be timeable. I was kind of confused by this kind of pre-labor activity. I was never quite sure if the contractions were strong enough to be considered real since I had never felt a real labor contraction with my water still in tact. I was dilated to a 4-5 that last week (3rd baby), I was ready to go.
I knew that I wasn't going to go much over my due date and that my body was telling me this baby was coming soon, but by my appointment that week he hadn't made up his mind yet and Dr. P was going out of town for the weekend. She would induce me the following Monday, but neither one of us thought I would make it that long and she really wanted to deliver the baby. Her partners are both great and it would have been fine to have one of them deliver Riley, but Dr. P offered me the unthinkable. She offered to come in on her night off, the night before she went on vacation when she wasn't even on call to induce and deliver Riley so that she wouldn't miss it.
When I get around to writing Scooter's birth story, you will understand how different this experience was for me regarding the hospital. I couldn't get approval to come in for an induction for him because the hospital was busy. When I showed up for Riley, despite the fact that the L&D department was slammed, I was ushered into one of the better labor rooms and was told 'Oh, we were expecting you. You're Dr. P's special patient for tonight.' Turns out the nursing staff adores her too. Anyway, it was way cool.
We got to the hospital around 6:30, got checked in and got set up in our room. In the asinine method of inductions, I had been instructed not to eat or drink anything for hours prior to my admission. However, because I would then be dehydrated, I had to have IV fluids before anything else happens. I am sure there is some medically profound reasoning for this, but really? You could have just let me have water! So I got hooked up to fluids and got checked and got comfortable. It turns out the hospital had been ridiculously busy that evening so there were a shortage of L&D nurses. Someone got called in on her day off to take care of me for a while until another woman had delivered. I really liked her, she was amazingly calm and collected. She didn't run screaming from the room at the suggestion that I was going to be induced and that I didn't want an epidural. When she was sent home just as my labor was really getting going, she was replaced with a girl who had been a nurse for four whole months (I asked), wore braces and looked like she still belonged in high school. Sweet girl, but really still just a girl.
By the time I got checked in, I was already having some pretty decent contractions and they were kind of regular for the first time. They were a good 12 minutes apart, but they were there. I am pretty sure that if we hadn't induced I would have had Riley the next day, right on his due date. But we were there and by 8 pm things were finally getting started. My doctor came in and started me on a slow drip of pitocin and somewhere around 8:30 or a little later broke my water. The pitocin got a little stronger and contractions started rolling in.
I had requested a rocking chair, but since none were available I was given a birthing ball with an arm support contraption around it. I sat on the ball and chatted with family between the pains. During the contractions I found a blue square of tile on the floor that ended up being my focal point. The only problem was, I hadn't told anyone it was my focal point and my husband kept standing on it. After several waves of pain where I was trying to see my square, I finally got out in between the contractions that he shouldn't stand right there. Poor Scotty, he was just trying to be where I was looking so he could help. He just needed to be elsewhere while he helped.
Tyler didn't think he needed to be in the room for Riley's birth before we got started, but as my labor advanced and he kept coming to visit he got to a point where he really didn't want to leave. He pranced around the room in between contractions and kept me entertained and smiling. At one point things were starting to get more intense and I thought I might already be going through transition, but it turned out to be just that I was finishing thinning out. It had been less than 2 hours. I was at a 6, but completely effaced. My mother-in-law decided to take a break and send my sister-in-law in for a visit. I wanted to see Brandy, but I also tried to tell Sandy that it wouldn't be long. She was there for Scooter's birth, but I guess she forgot how fast I can go at this point, so off she went. Brandy came in and I literally flew through the rest of my labor. It was so fast after that, the nurses started asking who could be in the room and who should leave. I seem to like a party when I have a baby so I said it didn't matter, but that Sandy wanted to be here. Brandy was going to go out and get her but I was suddenly in transition and moving to the bed. The nurses told her that if she went out at that point, they wouldn't be letting anyone else back in. Brandy could go out to her mom, but Sandy wasn't getting in. I told Brandy she should just stay.
Pushing was crazy fast with Riley. I think I only pushed through a couple of contractions before his head was out. Dr P wanted me to slow down, but I really couldn't. Riley was kind of coming of his own volition at that point. When his head was out, it turned out that the cord was around his neck very tightly. If I had taken my time pushing it might have made things a lot worse. Dr. P told me to stop pushing so she could remove the cord, but Riley kept coming without my aid. When she tried to remove the cord, it was so tight that it literally burst. There was blood splattered everywhere, but my baby was here and screaming like crazy. I actually held him for a moment and soothed his crying, but when they took him back from me to cut the cord he stopped breathing or was having trouble breathing. They rushed him over to the incubator and paged NICU. My mom was moving to take Tyler out of the room, but I told her it was fine. Somehow I knew it was fine. He had just been crying in my arms and he was fine. I'm sure this was after-birth adreniline, but I just knew. And when NICU flew into the room, Riley was just fine. He was crying and breathing on his own and the NICU staff wanted to know what they were doing there. Dr. P and the others decided that he just reacted to the shock of the quick birth.
They gave me my baby to hold. He had hair. My first baby with hair, and it was dark. It wasn't long before they whisked him away and up to the newborn nursery to double check that all was well, but not NICU. It was almost five hours before I got him back and I was not a very nice person by then. I was raging at the staff that they needed to bring me my baby and NOW. I apologized for my rudeness later, but I was furious that it took so long. My parents waited through the night with us to see him before they took the other two boys home with them. When I finally had him in my arms again, mom asked me who he looked like. Like Riley. Just Riley.
When I had been abandoned by my whole family in the delivery room after they took Riley upstairs (they followed the baby) I did get some visitors, but they were all nurses. Nurse after nurse popped into my room to see me, to meet me. It was so weird. They all thought that I was some kind of oddity. I guess natural births are just not that common in hospital settings anymore, but natural births that are induced with pitocin are unheard of. Everyone kept coming to tell me how great they had heard I had done. Hmmm - did you hear me yelling and cussing during transition? Are you sure you mean me? But they did. And that's why Dr. P had come in on her night off too, because she knew that I could and would do it - even if I wasn't sure I could.
Once I had Riley in my room with me, my parents went home and took my other sleeping children with them. I fed Riley then put him in his bassinet and got a whole hour of sleep before the morning nurses came on duty and started making their rounds. When my mother-in-law came that day and finally got to hold her grandson, she told me she knew better now and wasn't leaving next time. I give birth way too fast for her to try and take a break. I still hear this from her from time to time and I know she hated missing his birth. I feel bad about it too, but at the time we were out of options.
It's funny how things go, but by the 3rd baby I really didn't want to be in the hospital at all. I just wanted to go home. It makes it tempting to have a home birth, but I would never try. Look what happened to Riley, I am so glad I was in a place to help him if things had gone wrong. We brought Riley home and settled into our lives again. He looks the most like Scotty, he even has the same wrinkles in his forehead. His hair turned blonde within months and now that he's getting older, he has the same devilish, gonna-make-trouble grin that his daddy used to torment me with when we were kids.
Riley is a huge ball of fiery determination and devil-may-care attitude. He also is the most charming angel with the sweetest disposition. He has beautiful eyes and a smile that will talk you into almost anything. He's way too good looking. I am going to have to beat the girls away when he gets a little older. And he's my snuggly bear. He loves to snuggle even more than the other two. He's constantly struggling to keep up with his brothers and to be his own person. Now that he's 3, I expect that more of who the real Riley is will reveal itself every day.
I am so grateful to be his mom, and I really can't believe it's been 3 years already.
God Bless!
Matthew Riley Barrow, November 1, 2007 11:51 pm, 7 lbs 4 oz, Dark hair, blue eyes, Grandma Barrow's toes and his daddys forehead.
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