sweet fritz

Childbirth is entirely exhausting and while I'm super ready for bed at this moment I want to document my sweet boy's birth before I forget the details. On Saturday night, my girlfriends and I went to the hospital to visit our friend whose water had broken at 32 weeks and was on bedrest there. I had been having contractions all day and by the time I got to the hospital, I was in really bad pain. After a few minutes of talking, my friends basically forced me to go to Triage to get checked.

The nurse checked me and declared that I was still 4 cm (what I had left the hospital at a few days before) but my contractions were very regular at about 2 - 3 minute incremements. They monitored me for a while and encouraged me to go upstairs, walk around and come back when/if they started getting stronger.

My friends are awesome and rubbed my feet and back in "labor inducing pressure points" to get things going while we chatted. After a couple of hours my contractions had slowed down a lot but I had been told to go back to Triage before leaving the hospital. I got back to Triage and as soon as I laid on the bed they started again. The nurse monitored my contractions and they were still every 3 minutes or so but I hadn't progressed so they sent me home to wait it out after giving me an Ambien so I could sleep through the night.

The next morning I woke up with pretty strong contractions but not entirely convinced they were anything. All day long, while watching General Conference, I labored with painful contractions about every 3 - 5 minutes. I refused to believe that I was in labor since there had been so many days of "false" labor. I hadn't eaten all day and was feeling pretty nauseous. At around noon I finally decided to go lie down on our bed. After laying there for about 30 minutes, my contractions had slowed to about 5 - 7 minutes apart, convincing me further that this was more prolonged false labor. I decided to get up and maybe go on a walk and as I stood up, my water broke all over the floor.

I yelled to David just as I felt an extremely strong contraction. Within a minute I was hit with another extremely painful contraction. I told him we had to go NOW. David got all our things together really quickly and put William in the car while I yelled for him to hurry. My contractions were coming every minute or two. I told him we didn't have time to drop off Will at our friend's house. I had to go to the hospital because I felt like I had to push. He got there rather quickly where I was greeted with a wheelchair and sped off to drop off Will and come back. They took me straight to labor and delivery where I insisted I needed to push. After checking me they concluded I was only at 7 cm so I asked for an epidural. The best part was that my sassy nurse, Yolanda, got in my face at this point and told me I needed to "chill out" or else I wouldn't get the epidural - I was freaking out at the pain and how fast this was all happening.

It took about 30 minutes but once I got the epidural I was feeling good. 20 minutes later I started to have pressure and pain. I told the nurse and she thought that I just needed more "juice" but after another dose wasn't helping she checked me and I was at 9 cm. She decided to call the doctor and I really felt like I had to push. I started to push and within 10 minutes he was out! The doctor barely made it! She was rushing to pull on her gloves and telling me, "Stop pushing or he's going to fall on the floor!" Can you imagine?

so exhausted.

Anyway, he's adorable. A great eater and super sleepy. We named him Frederick Russell Bryant and will probably call him Fritz for short. I love, love, love him.

on our way home - can't wait for my belly to not look like I'm pregnant anymore.