RYDER'S BIRTH STORY - Sydney Socias

He’s here!!!

I knew I was going to love him but to what extent – I did not fully comprehend. He’s perfect, he’s healthy, he’s chill, he’s content and he’s kinda cute. I’ve spoken at length, that I had minimal expectations about how he would arrive in this world. I didn’t do classes, I didn’t get a midwife, I didn’t have a birth plan, I didn’t read one book and I tried to take ppl’s advice with a grain of salt. I like to do things my own way for the most part, and brining baby into the world was no exception.

From the time I found out I was pregnant, I decided to release all expectations and just trust that things would work out the way they were suppose to. I originally wanted to try to deliver naturally and by naturally I’m not talking sans epidural – fully expected to have that – not trying to be a hero here! But I wanted to avoid a c-section if possible, because I had heard so much about how the recovery can be so much more difficult than a natural delivery.

Only problem: at my last ultrasound, we found out he was in a Frank Breech position and absolutely REFUSED to budge, despite our best efforts. People kept telling me that he’d probably flip on his own and to give it time, but NOPE. We tried doing an EVC (I’ll let you google) to get him to flip but that went nowhere. SO, a scheduled c-section was planned for me at 39 weeks. While it wasn’t the way I had imagined giving birth, it was the way he needed it to happen so it quickly became fine with me. I figured it was a much better scenario than finding out he was breech after my water broke and having to do emergency surgery. Knowing what was going on and having the surgery planned gave me time to digest and mentally prep for it – which in the end, is likely a lot of the reason why my recovery has been smooth sailing for the most part.

The day before was super relaxed and laid back. We had lunch with family (and dropped Xavi off at my in-laws), checked-in on progress at the house and I got my bloodwork done for the following day. We ordered in, watched movies and got a good sleep – despite being SO unbelievably excited. Not finding out the gender was a complete trip, and it felt like everywhere I went ppl were taking wagers on whether it was a boy or a girl.

The next morning we had to be at the hospital for 8:30am to prep for surgery scheduled at 11:00. We arrived, they took my vitals, gave me an IV and meds while we waited in our room. Roberto brought up our bags and we got settled, anxiously awaiting the unknown. After what felt like an eternity, my OB came in to let us know that our surgery time would be bumped because another woman had gone into labour with a breech baby that needed to be delivered right away. At this point, I was just thankful that even though we now had to wait around, we weren’t in any sort of emergency situation so we decided the best thing to do was to nap. I’m not sure HOW we managed to sleep, but we did for a few hours and at around 4pm they called us into the OR.

By this time I was more than ready to meet our baby and was trying hard to remain calm. The biggest thing I was afraid of was the spinal tap, but my OB had mentioned beforehand that the anethesiologist who would be joining us was her absolute favourite and so I just trusted that – and she turned out to be amazing and made the experience a lot less scary than I had in my head. I got wheeled in, they gave me the freezing and then called in my husband. Moments later the only thing I could feel or move were my hands and my mind instantly flashed to that scene in What Lies Beneath when Michelle Phiefer is trying to escape from the bath tub after being drugged by her husband.

Even though I was completely frozen from the neck down, I could still feel the pressure and tugging of them getting the baby out. Then I heard ‘oh we’ve got some nice lips on this one!’ and I knew he was coming. Seconds later, the doctor raised our baby above the sheet so that we could see it’s face and I instantly fell in love. Roberto popped up to see below it’s waist and yelled ‘OMG it’s a boy!’. My eyes welled up with tears and then they took him away to get cleaned up. It all happened so fast but the whole vibe in the OR was super relaxed, happy and celebratory. Everyone in the room screamed and laughed when he came out because they had all been placing bets on baby boy or girl.

They placed him on my chest and we got to meet our boy. At this point I realized how much medication was pumping through my body, which was the weirdest feeling and I just tried to keep breathing to let it pass. Before we knew it we were getting wheeled back to our room to rest before the best night of our lives.