Ryan Alexander Fike

Last Thursday morning I was induced and at 1:02 pm, Ryan Alexander Fike, joined our family. This is his birth story, it may be TMI for some, so I warn you now.

The induction was voluntary, and I am happy I did it. Laurie, my midwife, offered to induced me at 39 weeks, while we were talking birth plan, after I mentioned that my water had broken before contractions with both of the other kids and that Ethan works over an hour away. This is not normally a cause for concern, but should anything have been odd, such as the cord coming out or there were signs of infection, you need to get the hospital asap. I was checked at the following appt, and I wasn't progressed enough to be induced, so I went last week Monday at 39 wks(4 days later) and I had progressed to 2 cm and 50%. We scheduled the induction Thursday morning.

As with Lyssa, I had Ethan and my dear friend Kate there with me. I love Ethan dearly, but he is a lousy coach, so Kate was my coach. They had a slew of LPN in training in the maternity ward. For my room alone, I had 4. One of them had had a child of her own, the other three had never seen a birth. I didn't know this until afterwards though. I got the hospital about 5 am and they started the pitocin at 6:30.

What you hear about inductions are true, the contractions are far more painful, and closer together. Laurie came in and broke my water at 8am. I was asking for the epidural about 8:30, at 4 cm. They gave me the epidural and unfortunately, it didn't completely numb everything like it should, I could still feel the lower left part of my abdomen, and my feet. Feeling my feet made it a lot easier to be moved around, so it wasn't a total loss. I wasn't registering the clock anymore, so I don't know how much time was passing after that. Ryan's heartbeat had been doing pretty well until a little after the epidural, when it started to dip into the 70's range whenever I was having a contraction. It was averaging about 130 otherwise. This had the nurse concerned obviously, so I was being bounced around from one side to the other for about 2 hours, nothing was changing.

They called Laurie back in (her office is right next to the hospital), and they decided that they needed to do two different internal monitors, one for his heart beat and one to see the severity of my contractions. Not long after, they decided they needed to push fluid back into me to see if that would give Ryan's the cushion he needed. It was an extremely weird sensation, but it worked. I have never heard of this being down before, but I won't knock it. They had also stopped the pitocin and that seemed to bring me back up to speed. They checked me again after that and I was at 7-8 cm.   Laurie said the baby could be at 10 cm within 5-20 mins, and for me to mention when I felt the need to push.  Remember the whole epidural didn't numb everything, I was feeling the need to push pretty quickly.  I didn't with Lyssa.

 I had been dealing with the pain pretty well, but once I hit the 10 cm mark, I got slammed with back labor pain.  Kate was massaging that out on my left side with Ethan holding my hand on my right.  Don't forget the 4 LPN's and the regular nurse with the midwife, there was a full crowd in that room. I started pushing and I was hoping it would be like Lyssa's, three sets of contraction and out she came, but no, this kid had other plans(Mark's took an hour and half, with the epidural already worn off).  It took about an hour, and he came "Sunny side up", meaning he had been posterior, which also explained the back pain. All the LPN's were crying.  As I said for three of them it was the first birth they had ever seen.  There was no tearing for me, so recovery has actually been a lot smoother.  I got him to nurse once they handed him back to me after the initial clean up, and he has been a pro ever since. His apgar was 9/9, and since he was small, the labor was relatively smooth.  Laurie said that had he been much bigger, it would have been a much harder delivery.

  He weighed in at 6lbs and 12oz and 19inches long, has hair, and is doing well.   Had his 1st dr. appt. and is already back to birth weight, which is excellent. He is doing the 'eat, sleep, poop' pretty well and the kids love him.