Ryan's Exciting Birth Story

Thank you all so much for your encouraging words, prayers, and support! It means so much to us to know that we have have such a wonderful support system of family and friends. We appreciate you!
Several people have asked how I'm doing, so I thought that I'd post a little bit about the "story of Ryan's birth" and how I'm doing (on a lighter note) instead of focusing on the health issues that Ryan is currently facing. His birth story would have made for an exciting episode of TLC's A Baby Story! When I woke up experiencing contractions, they were already 1 to 3 minutes apart and 15-30 seconds in duration. Since my water breaking had triggered our trip to the LDR with Ethan, I hadn't needed to count/time contractions before. I had to dig up my folder of info from the OB office to find out how many contractions within what period of time is cause for calling the doctor's office. My office's paperwork said "contractions every 8 minutes for 1 hour". Silly me decided to wait an hour and half of experiencing more rapid contractions before calling the doctor (I thought since this was so early, surely it would turn out to be false labor). We called the doctor and my parents at about 4am. The doctor suggested that I take a shower to see if the contractions dissipated, but when I told her that I already had done that, she recommended that I come in to triage. Mom arrived at our house at about 5:15am to stay with Ethan, we got to the hospital at about 5:30am. Triage took longer than I had expected! The nurse asked me about 45 minutes worth of medical history questions while I paused my responses here and there to breathe through contractions before she checked how far along I was. When she checked me at about 6:15am, I was 3 to 4 cm and had continued with regular strong contractions every 1 to 3 minutes. So, I was admitted, requested my epidural, and was comfortable with epidural pain relief at about 7:15am. The doctor didn't arrive until about 9:15am at which point I was 8-9cm, and she broke my water. They wanted me to wait to push until I felt some pressure, but when I still didn't feel any pressure at about 10:15am, my nurse checked and said that I had probably been fully dilated for quite awhile. She decided to have me try a practice push, and with one push, he was crowning. She told me to stop pushing and RAN out of the room to find the doctor. Thankfully my Dr. happened to be just outside in the hallway because the nurse said that if she had needed to page her, the doctor wouldn't have made it in time. My Dr. had one glove on and she and the LDR nurse were turned the other way (talking to the NICU staff who had arrived because Ryan was going to be delivered under 37 weeks of age), when I shouted, "I'm not pushing, but he's coming out on his own!" My Dr. spun around, quickly pulled her ungloved hand under the sleeve of her gown, and literally caught Ryan with her arm and single gloved hand. Dan had seen all this happening and had lunged forward in case no one else made it in time! So, Ryan had a pretty exciting birth, entering the world on his own timing (guess he waits for no one!), and literally barely being caught by my OB.
Thankfully since my labor and delivery with Ryan went so fast, I have been doing really well recovering. One of Ryan's respiratory therapists gave me a mini-lecture on overdoing it after seeing that I walked to the NICU from the LDR later in the day after he was born instead of asking someone to bring me in a wheelchair. I was too anxious to see Ryan (Dan was already with him) and didn't want to wait for a nurse to be available to take me there in a wheelchair. So it's a huge praise that my recovery has been really quick and easy and Dan and I have both been able to be with Ryan in his NICU room nearly the entire time since he was born. Now if we could just all get out of here together... ;)