Jen and Ryan

Just two weeks ago tomorrow, Cassius (KASH-us) Ryan was born. It is hard to believe that he’s already been with us for two weeks. He came three weeks early (his due date was the 15th of July—moved up from an original due date of the 20th of July), but he was ready to come. We were up at our ward camp-out when my water broke. I had convinced Ryan that at 37 weeks pregnant it wasn’t going to be fun at all for me to sleep over at the camp-out, so we had just gone up in the evening for the dinner. Ryan was lighting the charcoal for the Dutch ovens and I was just chatting with the other ladies when after one mild contraction, my water broke and fluid gushed down my pants. It was very unexpected. I told Ryan and we got in the car to go. Since we had not planned on staying overnight I didn’t have anything extra with me, but I was able to borrow some towels and dry pants. The contractions continued to be mild and I talked with Ryan on the drive down Spanish Fork Canyon as we made arrangements for a babysitter for Cayelle and I wrote a packing list for the hospital. I had been waiting for our basement to get finished, in order to move Cayelle to her new room and transition the nursery for a newborn baby boy, so nevertheless, I was not as prepared at home as I had hoped to be and that possibly contributed to the delay on packing my hospital bag. We stopped off at home and showered and packed our bags. We stopped at Bajio to get dinner—we left before dinner at the ward camp-out, I was hungry, and they probably weren’t going to let me eat at the hospital, also, I ate a Bajio salad when I was in labor with Cayelle and that is what I wanted this time too. We dropped Cayelle off at my sister’s to stay the night there. Luckily, Lora had just come home from California that day, so she was available to watch Cayelle. We made it to the hospital around 9 (about three hours after my water broke). I was dilated to a 4.5-5 when they admitted me. It wasn’t long before Dr. Ollerton came to check on me. I was happy to hear that he was on-call since I had a positive experience with him delivering Cayelle. Dr. Ollerton indicated that since I was Group B strep positive he didn’t really want to rush anything so that there would be time for the antibiotics to take effect (4 hours is ideal). Ryan and I were left in the labor and delivery room by ourselves. It was nighttime, so Ryan put in my HypnoBirthing tracks on the iPod and we both tried to rest. It was not until the last hour of my labor that the contractions became intense. At that point I preferred Ryan’s relaxation helps to the CDs. When Cassius decided to come he came out relatively easily (I pushed for three hours with Cayelle). His head crowned and two contractions later he had arrived at 1:01 a.m. Even though the contractions had gotten more intense near the end, when I was finally pushing to get Cassius out, I literally felt my tummy to be able to tell when there was tightening from a contraction to know when to push.

I am so glad that I did HypnoBirthing and that Ryan was so on board and practiced with me at home and even came to the birthing classes again with me. It was a wonderful birthing experience. I got to come down and be there for Cassius’s first bath, I wasn’t there for Cayelle’s and I was hoping that I could be for Cassius’s.