The Olsen Family: Introducing...Ryan Alan Olsen!

Last Tuesday morning I went to my normal weekly visit to Dr. May to see how things were progressing. I had dilated to 1.5 cm and was almost fully effaced. He (and I) were a bit surprised based on how I had been progressing and with my previous delivery with Luke, that I hadn't already had Ryan yet. Of course, I told him I was loosing all hope that he would be the doctor to deliver me and he said he was hoping to be there as well. He looked at his calendar and asked if I wanted to be induced that Friday (the day before his due date) so that he could be there to deliver me. He generally doesn't induce before the due date, but he also wanted to be there... Little did we know that I was going to go into labor that night!

Fast forward to the evening...

I woke up around 11:15pm that night and thought my water broke. I was right! I called to Zac from the bathroom and told him that it broke and he went into full panic mode. I told him to call his parents and have one of them come over to the house to watch Luke until my Mom came up. i called her and told her to come to the house to stay with Luke while we were at the hospital.

Zac was a bit panic stricken and was urging me to call the on-call doctor immediately and head out to the hospital right away. I told him to calm down, that we didn't have to run out the door. I called the on-call doctor and she told me to come on in to the hospital and asked if I was having contractions yet. I hadn't had one and was surprised that my water had broken, but excited to meet Ryan. I took a quick shower and then by the time I got out, Zac's Dad was there for Luke (who was soundly sleeping in his room).

We drove to the hospital (which thankfully, is only a few minutes away) and checked in around midnight. By this time, I had had one or two very mild contractions and was feeling pretty confident that I would not deliver until Dr. May was in his office the next morning. Little did I know! The nurses that admitted me also were feeling like my contractions wouldn't start to be in full force for another 6 hours. They just told me to try and get some sleep before labor really started to kick in.

Fast forward 30 minutes later and I was already having strong and painful contractions. Labor this time around was very interesting, very sporratic, painful and felt much different. They said that because my water was already broken, that it would feel different than it had when I had Luke. But, I was able to handle the contractions and just tried to relax and breathe through the pain. She reassured me things would be a while and that she knew I wanted to try and go without an Epidural but, that if I changed my mind, she would check me to see if I needed any pain relief.

Two hours later, I had to go to the bathroom and in the time it took for me to get up and go, I had two very strong contractions that were so painful I couldn't move. I got back to the bed and called the nurse in to check me. I told her I was being a wimp and just wanted to see how far I had progressed (thinking I was maybe 3 cm at best). She was shocked to find that I was 6 almost 7cm. She commented that she was monitoring my contractions and that I hadn't had too many and that they were very intermittent. (Yea, tell me about it! I'm just as shocked as you are!)

She called the anesthesiologist and within 20 minutes and several contractions later, I had an epidural in and was already ready to push. I guess it was good that she checked me, because if I had waited 20 more minutes, I wouldn't have been able to get one. Fhew!

The doctor arrived and in one push, Ryan was welcomed into the world! I still cannot believe that in less than 5 hours, my water broke and then I was holding Ryan in my arms! What a fast labor! Yay!