Braylen's Birth Story

Wow! What a different birth story I have for Braylen compared to Riley's birth story!!

Here's how it all went down~

I guess I should start with 3:00pm on Wednesday afternoon, February 10th (2 days overdue). I was sitting at the car shop getting my car inspection done. While sitting there, I had a contraction that wasn't really painful, but definitely more uncomfortable than the other Braxton Hicks I had been having on and off for weeks. At this point, I had talked myself into the fact that I was going to be induced on Saturday the 13th, so I just went on about the day and forgot about the contraction.

At 7pm, I decided to go ahead and go to bed. I just felt exhausted. Maybe my body knew what it was getting ready to go through??

At 10pm, I woke up with a pretty painful contraction. Still not terribly painful, but definitely painful. I continued until 11pm with very random contractions - 9 min., 12 min., 4 minutes, 7 minutes, etc. I decided to call the doctor on call. She told me that since they were so random to try to go back to sleep and that they were probably false labor.

At this point, the contractions began getting increasingly more painful, but stayed random. At 12:00 midnight, I could not talk or walk through the contractions. I decided at that point, that I wanted to at least go the hospital and get checked because the contractions hurt so bad, even though they were still coming at irregular intervals. So, at 12:15, I woke Tony up and told him we had to go to the hospital. My parents came and stayed at our house since Riley was in bed. We left our house at 12:30am.

As soon as we got into the car, I had a big contraction (I had to stop all movement and Tony had to wait to be able to shut the door) and from that point all the way to the hospital the contractions were exactly TWO MINUTES APART, lasting one minute each. That's only a minute break between each contraction for a 45 minute hospital ride. Let's just say that ride was not boring! We were running red lights and the emergency flashers were on! I still laugh when I think about it.

By the time we reached the hospital at 1:00 am, I was starting to feel pressure and didn't feel like I was going to make it! I waited until I was between contractions, then made a run to the ER desk, Tony trailing behind (he just left the car in front of the ER door). By the time I made it to the desk, another contraction was coming on. Again, all I could do was brace myself against the desk and not move or say a word (except for my moans of pain). The lady quickly got me a wheelchair and rolled me back to labor triage.

After getting to triage, I kept having to stop what I was doing (undressing for them to check me), and lean against Tony, my arms resting on his chest, and breathe through the contractions . They checked me and I was 6 centimeters. At this point, I was thinking, "Oh, thank God, I'm only 6...I can still get some meds!"

Then, at 1:06 (we had them check the records after), I was in a bed, moaning in pain and breathing through contractions, my water broke just when they started transporting me to a room. My contractions were getting more and more painful by the second and the pressure was really bad. When I got to a delivery room, one of the nurses checked me again and I was already at 10 centimeters. All these people were coming in, scrambling to get an IV in my arm, put monitors on, calling the Doctor to come right away, getting the baby nurses in, etc. The whole time, I was moaning in pain with each contraction that were now less than a minute apart. I asked for Demerol(sp?) since I knew it was too late for an epidural. That's when I found out it was TOO LATE FOR MEDS!! Oh.my.goodness. The pain was excruciating!!!!!!!!! There REALLY aren't enough exclamation marks to say how painful it was, LOL. Or maybe I'm just a weenie?

So, after pushing for about 10-15 minutes, Braylen Kenneth arrived at 1:28am....just 28 minutes after arriving at the hospital...whew, that was a close one!

I do have to say that with no epidural and no meds, I was ready to hop off the table and go running right after he was out. You really do feel better and more energetic afterwards with a natural birth. As painful as it was, I'm so glad it worked out the way it did.

As for choosing a name, Braylen was a name we had picked out 7 years ago when we were just dating. It's been our boy's name for so long, but we had kind of ruled it out for some reason when we found out we were having a boy. Then, after he was born, we both felt like he looked like a Braylen and that was the name we had picked out so long ago and it really does have special meaning to us. Tony chose the middle name Kenneth after his dad.

And now he's here and he's perfect! We really are enjoying every minute!