She's here! The birth story of Riley Paige McCants

The very early stages of labor began on Friday around 5:00pm. For about 4 hours, contractions were roughly averaging 7 minutes apart. I went ahead and went to my pre-natal yoga class and then came home and ate dinner. By bed time, the contractions were over 10 minutes apart and irregular. Saturday and Sunday followed a similar pattern with contractions ranging between 7 mins apart for several hours to irregular contractions between 10 and 15 minutes apart. By Monday morning, I was a little nervous about all the weekend activity, so I called the doctor's office as soon as they opened and asked how far apart contractions should regularly be before I called it in. They said 10 minutes apart or when your water breaks. Well, my water hadn't broken, but I'd broken the 10 minute mark several times. They suggested I go ahead and come in around 11:30am just to see if I'd progressed any further than the one fingertip dilation or my cervix had gotten any thinner.

It turns out I hadn't dilated any further, but my cervix was definitely much thinner. The doctor again told me she could arrive any time. It was up to her, but to keep track of the contractions and if they got any closer than 7 minutes, to call him. I went back home and finished up some things for work and kept the heating pad on. ALL of my contractions throughout the weekend were focused solely in my lower back and they were REALLY starting to wear on me. I really hate back pain and this was worse than any menstrual cramping I'd ever gone through. By 6:00 pm, I started timing the contractions and they were 6 minutes apart. We ate dinner at 6:30pm, I took a shower and Jimmy watched the video of the last birthing class to make sure he new what to do with a newborn. lol. By 7:30 pm, the contractions were still 6 mins apart and definitely more intense than they had been to date. I called it in.

Dr. Walter called me back immediately and said to go ahead and head to the hospital to be monitored. We got our hospital bag and all the extras (breast pump, boppy pillow, my pillow, etc) and headed out. By the time we got there, and got through all the paperwork and vitals checking, my contractions had spaced apart again, but they were still intense. They checked me in triage and I was still only a fingertip dilated. They monitored me for an hour and then came back and checked me again. Amazingly, the nurse said I had progressed to 3 cm and she could feel a bulging bag of waters. She called the doctor and he said to put me in a room for two hours. If I progressed any further or if my water broke in those two hours, then I could stay and have the baby. If nothing happened, then they would send me home. While we waited briefly for them to ready a room for us, Jimmy and I walked the halls. After about 5 minutes, they took us to our room and I felt the urge to pee. After I was done, I washed my hands and bent down to throw away the paper towel and felt a trickle down my leg. I thought it was urine at first, but as I stepped back to from the puddle, I trickled again. I grabbed a towel and felt more leakage. Jimmy ran down the hall to the nurse's station while I cleaned up what I could off the floor and held a pad between my legs. A few minutes later, a nurse came in and checked what was on the pad with a ph strip. It was positive for amniotic fluid. The nurse grinned and said, "Looks like you're staying." Oh yay!

By this time it was around 11pm I think. Both Jimmy and I started sending mass text messages to everyone that tonight was the night and we were having a baby. I called my parents in Ocala and told them as well. Ironically, my sister had just arrived that afternoon from Texas for the holidays. They decided to drive down and join us for the labor process. The nurse checked me again to make sure my water had completely broken, but it turned out it was only the fore bag? I was definitely leaking, but she could still feel the membrane. I was 4.5 centimeters dilated though.

My parents and sister arrived around 3:30am and I was in severe pain from the intense back labor. I had, up to this point, tried everything I could think of to change baby's position and get her to turn around so labor wouldn't be so focused in my back. I stood, squatted, and got on all fours in the shower. I squatted, walked, circled my hips, and sat on the birthing ball outside of the shower. Jimmy rubbed my back constantly. Nothing was working. Contractions felt like they were right on top of each other. The nurses had checked me twice more, but I was still 4.5 centimeters. They mentioned possibly putting me on pitocin if I didn't start progressing soon. By 4:00am, I just couldn't endure the back pain any more. I couldn't find any relief whatsoever and gave in and asked for an epidural. They immediately hooked me up to an IV so I could get a bag of liquids in me. By 5:00am, I had finished the bag and the anesthesiologist arrived. Within minutes, my back pain was gone. I could still feel my legs and feet, but I couldn't feel a single contraction. I nearly cried from the relief I felt. 4 days of that constant pain was suddenly gone. You have NO idea how huge that was.

Since they had given me the epidural, the contractions spaced out, so they started me on pitocin at 6:00am. The doctor came in around 6:30am and checked me. I was still at 4.5 centimeters. He explained that he was going to see if the pitocin would help me to progress, but he wasn't going to leave me on it for too long as it wouldn't be good for me OR the baby. If it didn't work, he would schedule me for a c-section. Now, I was frustrated because I was veering so far away from my birth plan. This was no longer in any way a natural birth and it looked like it might not even be a vaginal one.

By 10:30 am, they had steadily increased the pitocin drip to 16. (The maximum I could receive was 20). They checked me and I was still at 4,5 cm although my contractions were about 2 minutes apart at that point. I still wasn't feeling any of them. The nurse called the doctor and he said they would give me one more hour. If I didn't progress, they would schedule me for a c-section.

In that hour, the epidural felt like it was wearing off. I started feeling pressure in my hips and lower back on my tailbone again and I could tell when a contraction was coming by the increase in pressure. The nurse mentioned that that was normal. If I started to feel pain though, to let her know and she'd call the anesthesiologist to check on me.

At 11:30, the nurse came in and checked me again. She barely stuck her fingers up inside me when her jaw dropped. She said, "You're not going to believe this. Her head is way, way down and you are 9 cms. It's time to call the doctor. You're having this baby." Wow! Really? Yes, really. High fives all around.

Uh-oh. Suddenly my brain activity and nerve sensors caught up with the rest of us and I really started feeling contractions again. Looks like epidural decided to wear off after all. By noon, the nurse said the doctor would be there in 20 minutes. My parents decided this would be a good time to leave the room, although my sister asked if she could stay and watch. I said that was fine. The nurse told her she could even help out by holding one of my legs when it was time to push.

The doctor didn't arrive until 12:36pm. I know this because I was watching the clock very closely. The pain was BACK and I was really, really hating it. Back labor REALLY sucks. The doctor checked me and then told the nurse he needed several things for delivery. She left to go get him while he explained to me that when the nurse returned, she would help me begin pushing. He was going to leave and get into his scrubs, then he was going to eat some lunch. I thought he was joking, but the man was dead serious. He was going to eat his lunch before I delivered this baby. Anyway, the nurse would call him when I was ready to truly push. He said it would probably take about 45 minutes to an hour to get to that point if not longer. Then he left. In the meantime, I'm steadily taking really deep breaths and moaning low to get through each contraction. God they sucked.

The nurse came back in and said the pharmacy was taking their time getting her the stuff the doctor requested and she would be right back. I looked at the clock and saw that it was about 12:50pm. I looked at Jimmy and growled, "If he'd gotten here at noon when this all started, I'd be DONE by now!" Jimmy just told me to relax and breathe. I growled, "Stop telling me to relax. It does NOTHING for me. I CAN'T relax. You fucking relax." He laughed and said that's what he's supposed to say. It was his job to tell me when to relax. I told him to shut up and just let me hang on to him. He wisely just shut up and let me hang on. Finally, the nurse came in and sat down in front of me. She showed Jimmy and Kelli how to hold my legs and then told me to push with the next contraction. She wanted me to push 3 times with each contraction by taking a deep breath and pushing like I needed to take a really big poop. After ten seconds, do it again and then again. When the next contraction hit, I followed her directions. It took me one contraction to figure out how to push the way she wanted. After the second contraction (3 more pushes) she told me to stop. She couldn't believe I was pushing that well. She needed to call the doctor to come back. The baby was ready to come out.

AGAIN with the waiting. I felt such intense pressure that I didn't want to stop pushing. It had actually felt GOOD to push and she wanted me to stop and WAIT AGAIN??!! No effing way. That so wasn't fair! Sure enough. I had to wait another 10 minutes until the doc got there. THEN I had to wait while he took his sweet time getting the rest of his scrubs and gloves on. I finally said, "Please, please, please let me push. I REALLY need to push." He sat down nonchallantly and said "go ahead do what you need to do." Alrighty then! I pushed once, twice and third times a charm. She shot out of me like a rocket. OH MY GOD that felt so good. I started crying because I couldn't believe what I'd just done. The doctor was thoroughly shocked. HE couldn't believe how quickly I'd just pushed her out. In fact, he kept going on and on about how incredibly amazing it was that I had pushed her out so quickly. In fact, I'd done it so quickly that he hadn't had a chance to slow me down so I wouldn't tear. When I asked him if I'd torn at all. He explained how, yes, I had literally torn my self apart from vagina to rectum and was bleeding pretty badly. I tore everything except the rectum itself. Yeah, I was feeling it now. OUCH! My sister got to cut the umbilical cord because Jimmy did NOT want to touch it. lol.

The doctor then said he was waiting on me to deliver the placenta. Did I want to try and push it out? Okay sure. He jumped back as it shot out of me. Immediately, he started pressing down hard on my stomach, massaging my uterus to help stem the bleeding. It worked. Again, he couldn't believe how good I was at pushing, especially with an epidural and being a first timer. I told him how I thought the epidural stopped working over an hour prior because I felt EVERYTHING! He agreed with me that that was probably the case.

A few minutes later, Riley latched on and started breastfeeding like a pro while the doctor began stitching me up. It also turns out that I had a small grape size cyst that got in the way of him suturing, but he let it be. He said he'd take care of that at my next appointment as he didn't want to do anything that might cause more bleeding. Riley was born at 1:17pm, weighing 8 lbs 1 oz and was 19 1/2 in long. Her apgar scores were 9/10.