The birth of Riley Shea Young, from my side of things…
Ever since Jenny developed pre-eclampsia and Riley’s birth became an “any day now” thing rather than a “on or near June 14th” thing, I’ve been putting Jenny and Riley at a pretty high priority. Anything that isn’t time-sensitive has been put on the back burner. Since I am only working two nights a week now (more on that later), I thought it would be simple to find time to hang out at Jenny’s place while she was on bed rest and then go see the baby. I was wrong, but I’m trying really hard. If she lived like 10-20 minutes away, it wouldn’t be a big deal to pop over for a few hours or an hour, but since they live an hour away, we’re talking a two-hour round trip, so you pretty much have to plan to be there at least 2-3 hours for it to be worth the drive time.
So, since Jenny hasn’t blogged about the birth yet and Jeramiah skipped most of the labor story, I figured since I was there for like 50-60% of it, I would tell the story from my point of view in the hopes that later on they will appreciate that I took the time to write down my memories. I don’t blame them, of course… they have both been busy learning how to care for a baby, and I think Jeramiah skipped most of the labor story so he could get to the “good stuff”, which is everything AFTER Riley finally exited the womb and entered oxygen-land.
Jenny, Jeramiah, and Mom went to the hospital some time around 4am last Wednesday, May 27th to start her induction. Jenny made it to 37 weeks and a few days, which is more than enough time “in the oven” for a healthy baby. I had to conduct a meeting with my employees at 5:30pm so I was hoping that Riley would at least wait that long so that I could get to the hospital by the time the family got to meet her. I, um, got my wish, and then some.
By the time I got to my meeting and it ended, Jenny hadn’t made much progress on the Pitocin and they switched her to an insert called Cervidil which would have to stay “up there” for 12 hours. They put that in around 2pm. So, I knew I had plenty of time to wrap up my meeting stuff and chat with people before I needed to leave. Plus, I already knew that Jenny can’t sleep in hospital beds and there are no “visiting hours” in maternity, so I didn’t rush. I left work around 9pm, changed my clothes to something more comfy, grabbed dinner, and got to the hospital around 10pm. Little did I know that I wasn’t going to leave again for another 24 hours!
When I got to Jenny’s room, she had pain in her back (I brought her a back massager but it didn’t end up doing much good) and she was getting up to pee every 30-45 minutes. Peeing was an ordeal. Since the induction medicines have additional risks to the uterus and the baby, and they were making sure her pre-eclampsia didn’t get worse, she was on constant monitoring for blood pressure, heart rate, and blood oxygen saturation, as well as the strength of her contractions and Riley’s heart rate. When she needed to pee, some monitors had to be removed from her and some that were harder to position right had to be unplugged from the machines, and her whole IV stand had to be unplugged and come along too. Then, when she was done, everything had to be hooked up correctly again. It was also a struggle to keep the line untangled so that bad things didn’t happen (like her IV getting yanked out).
For some reason, the computer screen in the rooms shows the heart rates of mother and baby and the contractions for all the rooms in the vicinity of hers. This led her to post on Twitter “Everyone is having contractions but me”.
Jenny, on the other hand, between getting up to pee all the time, was very uncomfortable. The bed was really hard and it kept digging into her hip. She tried the rocking chair for a while as well, but the evil device didn’t lean back very far so it wasn’t very relaxing. She blamed this on the Cervidil because the pain in her back didn’t start until after it was inserted. However, now, I don’t think it was.
At 2am they pulled the Cervidil out and started the Pitocin back up and kept increasing the dose bit by bit every half hour or so.
By this time, Jeramiah and Mom were exhausted and tried to find a comfortable place to nap. However, this was not to be. The chair that looked like the intended nap place appeared to have been constructed by Satan himself. The back was too low to lean your head against, and the foot rest wasn’t long enough to lay your body across, so Mom ended up kinda wedged on it with her head against the hard arm rest. Jeramiah tried to sleep on the rocking chair but it couldn’t lean back far enough. He also tried laying his head on a table. In the end, he put everything soft he could find on the floor and declared it “comfortable” because he could stretch out. I’m pretty sure he was in a delirium brought on by sleep deprivation. I stayed awake (since I had only been up since like 4pm) and took my turn at helping Jenny go to the bathroom. She did catch some small naps and I ran down the battery on my phone playing all the games that I have.
Zip forward to 7am. (27 hours in) We get a new nurse who is Awesome. Just before she came in I had spent some time examining Satan’s chair and decided that it had the necessary hingework to recline fully, so I asked her if she knew how to do it. Sure enough, apparently you lift the seat somehow and the damn thing flops out to an almost full-length resting place! Yay! Nurse Awesome spent some time getting to know all of us and what was going on. Shortly afterwards, her doctor arrived to check on how she had done during the night. Since we still couldn’t see any contractions on the monitor, she inserted an IUPC (Intra-Uterine Pressure Catheter, yeah huh!) to measure the exact force of the contractions of her uterus. Behold! Jenny was actually having contractions! They were very small but they came over and over in waves, with no break in between, which explained the back pain she had been having for the last oh, 12 hours or so! Jenny was also dilated to “3 or 4 centimeters” and was offered an epidural, which we convinced her to accept.
Mom and I went to get some breakfast, and I tell you what… you just can’t get a good dose of runny scrambled eggs and seriously greasy sausage anywhere but a hospital or an airplane. But, hey, we were starving and it was edible. We were going to eat in Jenny’s room, but we were rejected at the door because the anesthesiologist was sticking a needle into Jenny’s spine. Yay! Mom and I were very glad she decided to get the epidural because we hated seeing her so miserable.
Jenny was, in fact, much happier with the epidural. The stress had left her face and her mood was much better. I was getting pretty tired and we now had a “real bed” to sleep on, so I made sure Mom and Jeramiah didn’t want the bed thing, then claimed it. Jenny was given a catheter since she wouldn’t be able to walk with the epidural so the potty runs were at an end as well. By the time I fell asleep, it was probably 10 or 11am. Jenny woke me up once because I was snoring and she was really jealous at how easily I could sleep compared to her. She did manage to get a better nap in since she couldn’t feel half her body and her pee was taken care of. I think Jeramiah got a little rocking chair nap in as well, but I was so out of it I can’t remember.
So, I woke up around 2 (ok, I was woken up) and Mom and I went to get some lunch. Lunch was much better than breakfast, but it’s hard to screw up a grilled cheese. Jenny was not allowed to eat so of course she said it smelled like the best grilled cheese ever made on the planet.
Around 3-ish, Nurse Awesome was replaced by Nurse Great because Nurse Awesome was with another woman who was pushing. She checked in on us and a little later, while Jeramiah ran down to the cafeteria, Jenny was complaining that the epidural wasn’t working right because she could still feel pain on one side and switching sides was no longer helping. She was using the “demand dosage” on the PCA pump as often as she could but it just wasn’t helping anymore. Mom asked her if she felt pressure like she needed to, uh, go #2, and she said that she did. Mom knew that meant the baby was probably ready to come out! We got Nurse Great back in and she gloved-n-lubed up to see how it was going and she was surprised to hit Riley’s head with her fingers a lot sooner than she had expected. Jenny was dilated to 10cm and the baby was at +2! Holy crap, it’s Riley time, after about 36 hours!
Mom called Jeramiah and he thought she was joking about Jenny being ready to push, but we managed to convince him that this wasn’t a joke this time and he hurried back upstairs. Not that I blame him. We had “cried wolf” to each other a couple of times, such as if someone would wake up or come back from the bathroom, we’d ask if they wanted to hold Riley.
Nurse Great got Jenny started with her pushing. She instructed Jenny on how often she would be doing it and which muscles to use to do it. I think she must have been coaching her for 30-45 minutes before her doctor got there. I remember that her doctor was supposed to be “off” at 5pm, so we barely made it in time because I think Jenny wanted her to be the one to deliver.
Time flew by, and Riley’s progress was really slow. Her heart rate stayed strong and there were no signs of distress, so we kept pushing. Now, I say “we”, because Mom had a leg and Jeramiah had a leg and I was just watching with the camera ready, but we all felt like a part of the “work”. That’s just silly talk, though, because Jenny was using every bit of strength and resolve she had to propel Riley out of her womb! The doctor had her switch positions a couple of times while Riley made slow progress out. It was the most frustrating thing to watch… ever. You could see the top of Riley’s poor little head… so close and yet so far. Finally, she seemed out enough that *one more contraction* would do it. The doctor (who had been joined by another doctor who I think was the baby’s doctor and a little blonde med student who was observing) broke down the bed and started preparing to finalize the delivery process. It still took like 4 or 5 more contractions until finally Riley’s head was out and she was here! All of us starting crying like little girls, of course.
So, I was trying to text Katelyn so she could let the family out in the waiting room know that Riley had finally come out and somehow I missed the picture taking opportunity of Jeramiah cutting the cord. Maybe I’ve watched too much TV or something but I thought you had more than 2 seconds after birth to get that picture! The damn thing was cut and Riley was dropped on Jenny’s chest before I could even drop the phone mid-text and aim the camera! So, instead, I took some pictures of that (like 2 pictures, maybe) before Mom’s memory card was full (something she obviously forgot to check!), and while she was deleting pictures, Riley was moved over to the warmer. I went over to that (which was a complex maneuver of slinking around medical equipment and medical personnel) and took more pictures of Riley on his camera before its battery died. (argh)
Time has just flown by since then. I went down there Tuesday evening and made dinner and did the dishes (ok, I ordered pizza and we ate it on paper plates) and I got to hold her quite a bit. That’s pretty much all there is to do with her right now but it’s still awesome to do. I’m looking forward to being the aunt who spoils her rotten, though this little girl has more aunts and uncles than she can count. I’m so grateful to have been allowed to be in the room while she was born, because there was definitely no way the whole family could have been in there. I’m looking forward to watching her grow up to be a pretty and smart girl.
I love you, little Riley, and I apologize to all of you who actually sat and read this whole long thing!

