As the due date of baby girl approached we went to the doctor for my 37 weeks visit and saw I was dialated to a 3. While every woman is different, I felt I knew my body pretty well and knew that the baby would be coming earlier than expected. My mom made her plane ticket based on when I felt the baby would come which was 2 weeks earlier than what the doctors thought. The day before my mom flew in I began to experience on and off contractions. Nothing consistent or regular though and nothing too painful. The next day I felt the same on and off again contractions. My mom was to fly in at 7:30pm and so I was anxious to go pick her up and was pretty sure she would make it to witness the birth of our baby girl. At around 4pm the contractions seemed to be making a pattern and coming every 12 min. For some crazy reason I thought that it would be smart to hurry and go grocery shopping before my mom got in so I went to Walmart and shopped while stopping to breathe through contractions. When I got home it was 6pm and I started to talk to Shawn about the contractions and how I felt they were coming regularly every 8 min. We would be leaving to get my mom in 2 hours so we decided that after we picked her up we would go straight to the hospital.
At 6:30pm I called our good friend Elizabeth Sorenson and asked if she would be willing to come over and watch Reagan while we picked up my mom and went to the hospital. Under such short notice she said of coarse! and told me to call her whenever we needed her to come. After I hung up the phone I went upstairs into the bathroom and had a bigger contraction than normal. I decided to call my sister Sherri because well she has had 5 kids and is always okay with me explaining nasty details about my body with her haha. She's a good sister! She told me that if she were me she would not go to the airport and would go to the hospital right away. So I hung up with her and had Shawn call Elizabeth back asking her to come over right away. Within 20 min. Elizabeth had arrived. In the matter of those 20 min. my contractions were coming every 4 min.and were INTENSE! When she arrived Shawn and I were already in the car and took off as soon as we saw her pull up in our rear view mirror. We still had about a 25 min drive ahead of us and I was clinging to the car handle in pain. When we were about 7 min. away from the hospital I felt something in my body change. I'll spare the nasty details but I felt as if the head was pushing to come out. I was screaming at Shawn to hurry and when we pulled up to the hospital I was in tears because I was literally trying not to push but couldn't help it. Shawn pulled over on the side of the road and ran into the hospital to get help. No one was around and all he could see was a wheelchair under a sign that said "DO NOT TAKE." Naturally Shawn took it and came out to the car. I literally could not move because I thought the baby would fall out. When he ran us into the hospital there was a lady in scrubs down the hall and Shawn screamed that I was having a baby and that it was coming out right now. She ran us around a couple corners to the ER during which my water broke. When we entered into to the ER there were people EVERYWHERE. Some were crying, some were bleeding, but everyone was staring as we ran in with me yelling and screaming, "SHOULD I TAKE OFF MY PANTS?! SHE'S COMING OUT! I FEEL HER!". Nurses quickly took over my wheelchair and rushed me to the side of the hall where they lifted me onto a stretcher and pulled a curtain to divide us from the rest of the people standing around. Shawn said that as they lifted me onto the stretcher they took off my pants and saw that baby was already "crowning" (eww gross word I know!) :) This is when I became a crazy person because it hit me that I wasn't going to be able to get an epidural and I would be having the baby naturally- I began to instantly panic.
This is where I'm going to let Shawn take over because I was a little out of it at this point....
Alright, so when Cindy was placed on the stretcher and they looked at her they saw that she was in fact having the baby right then. I've never seen Cindy so demanding or vocal before. She was literally like the woman on tv screaming and crying at the same time like a crazy person. While one nurse had her left hand, I held her right hand and tried to do what I could to comfort her (which wasn't much). While pushing she was begging for the epidural which the nurses in response kinda laughed while saying "Sweety, she is already half way out." Cindy then began crying and yes even bit my hand really REALLY hard. It was the saddest thing to watch my wife go through so much pain and not be able to do anything about it. Within minutes of being put on the stretcher, Cindy had a perfect baby girl placed in her arms. Right away the nurses then took us up to labor and delivery. As we opened the curtain in the ER all the people were looking at us and making comments of "Woah that was fast!"
When they took us up to labor and delivery they then weighed and measured the baby. Our little one was 4lbs 12 oz and 17" long. She was a TINY little girl with A LOT of blonde curly hair.
The nurses also then changed me into a hospital gown and got me all checked in. After about 10 min. there, my actual doctor arrived and checked me over. I was still in a state of shock and just started crying. The experience was just so overwhelming and I couldn't believe that I had just had a baby. We were then moved to a recovery room after the doctor cleared me and the baby and that's when things began to really set in. My mom had landed 15 minutes after the baby was born and received a text from Shawn letting her know that I had had a baby and that we wouldn't be there to pick her up. Luckily she was able to get a rental car and made her way straight over to the hospital from the airport to meet her new little granddaughter.
For the first 3 days of baby's life we called her Rylee. A name we had picked out a while ago and planned on naming our daughter. After about 3 days though the name just didn't seem to sit well and our little girl just didn't look like a Rylee.
Our daughters official name is now:
Rachel McKay McNaughton
We now have two little Rae Rae's who are the Rae's of sunshine in our lives. We couldn't be happier and are so blessed to have the most beautiful little girls sent to our family.
