IT'S A BOY!!! (aka...the long awaited updates...)

It's official: Ryder Hamden is here! He arrived a happy, healthy baby boy on Tuesday, December 16th at 3:26pm, weighing in at 7 lbs, 1 oz, and 19.5 inches long! He's absolutely beautiful, and Raymond and I couldn't be more proud of him!

I want to predicate this long posting by apologizing for the lapse in updates. I envisioned the induction to be a long and boring process, meaning that I'd have time to blog my progress...WRONG! Well, it WAS a long and boring process...but considering I had to lay down flat or on my side the entire time, that meant I wasn't able to sit up and be on the computer for an extended period of time. PLUS it took the nurses 3 sticks before they got my IV hooked up correctly...so my hands were in dire straits until, like, an hour ago! :)

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Raymond and I get to the Labor & Delivery floor for check in around 9pm on Monday night (the 15th). Upon approaching the front desk, Raymond looks square at the girl sitting behind the desk and informs her that he's the pregnant man, and that he's there for his induction. This is where the fun begins...

We get settled into our room quickly, and the girl that is our nurse for the evening just so happens to be a girl I grew up dancing with, and recently married a family friend's son. Small world, this place. She gets me all hooked up, and the docs begin monitoring Ryder and me before they administer any induction drugs. That lasts about 10 minutes before I decide to sit up (instead of lay down)...and all of the monitors go haywire, they lose the baby's heartbeat...and that made for an extra FIVE hours of monitoring before they would give me anything to begin the induction process. Consider me pissed at this point, and frustrated that no one told me I had to sit perfectly still so no one would freak out at once! Anyway...at least they had boo-koo amounts of Sonic ice and Jell-O to keep me appeased....

Fast-forward to the next morning, and after checking my cervix, the doctors determine that it's time to begin the Pitocin drip to start manufacturing contractions. BUT not only did they want to start the Pitocin...they thought it would be funny to play a mean trick on my crotch and use the most wretched and awful apparatus for dilating one's cervix....the foley bulb catheter. If there was one situation I was trying to avoid throughout my labor...one ridiculous instance I have told Raymond that I wanted to avoid at ALL costs....it was the foley bulb....and guess what? I GOT IT! The doc sticks this wand up into your cervix, and blows up a balloon-looking-thing to widen it. Then before he/she exits the room, the doc will do whatever the equivalent is to tying the other end of the wand to an anvil, and drops the anvil over the side of the bed, leaving the bulb in your cervix...laughing all the while. Anyone ever seen the movie Misery? It's a medieval practice that Kathy Bates would have used on her bed-ridden victim. Well when the weight applies enough pressure on your cervix, and causes it to dilate enough, the bulb will fall out itself...and when this happens....you know you are 3 cm dilated. This took about 15 minutes...and I was writhing in pain for every millisecond of that 15 minutes. Bastards...

About 3 hours later, I get the epidural...and boy was THAT a Godsend! Any of you ladies that have birthed without the help of an epidural are MACHINES, and you shall be commended for your efforts. There's nothing painful about getting it, and it saves you SO MUCH energy in breathing and pain management. OF COURSE, however, the epidural only worked on my right side, and my left side was left wandering around looking for the party for the rest of the day. Matter of fact, my right leg was rendered useless for the rest of the day and into the night. This meant that I never really got relief from any of the contractions...but the anesthesia SURE came in handy once delivery time came! I didn't feel a thing!

Docs broke my water around 12:15, and discovered I was only dilated to 4 cm at that point. The docs monitored my contractions and the baby's heartbeat via an internal fetal monitor...and began to worry that he may not be able to handle the delivery process. For some reason, every time I had a contraction, his heart rate would drop significantly, and no one could determine why this was happening. This scared the ever-living CRAP out of Raymond and I, because we'd made it through this entire pregnancy without incident...and now things were looking a bit scary! No one checked my cervix again until about 3:15 pm, and at this point, they could feel his head...and informed us that we were minutes out from delivering our little bundle of joy!

Our OB didn't have time to make it in from Killeen for delivery, and Raymond didn't even have time to put on scrubs for the occasion! Our L&D room was magically transformed into this birthing Eden, equipped with white lights, stirrups, about 24 doctors, nurses and other spectators (dude, I'm SERIOUS!)...and "oh SHIT!" bars. As soon as they got all of this set up, they elevated my bed, helped me find my "oh SHIT!" bars, and we began pushing. After only four rounds of pushing, I saw a little conehead make his way out, and the rest of his body just slipped out too! After 10 minutes, we had Baby Ryder, and he couldn't have been more beautiful to see for the first time! They quickly handed him to the NICU nurses, who were onhand to do a set of tests on him to ensure his health and aptitude were on track...cleaned him up, and Raymond brought him to me!

The rest of the next 24 hours are pretty uneventful...Ryder undergoes a series of tests, we sign a bijillion pieces of paper, meet a bijill-jillion nurses and other officials who contributed to our revolving post-partum room door, visit with some people...have a few successful bowel movements...and then we were out of there! Here's a picture of Baby Ryder in his car seat ready to go home!

We couldn't be happier with our new family! Ryder has been such a delight to spend the past 48 hours with, and we can't wait to spend the rest of our lives discovering what type of person he is. We haven't been able to determine who he looks more like, or whose toes or nose he has...but if there's one conclusion we can all draw from looking at him: he has a FULL head of thick brown hair! Here are some pictures from the past couple of days: