Ryan Sean-Michael McSwain

Trying to capture the experience and emotions of giving birth to a child is so overwhelming, it's almost paralyzing. I know that I won't be able to come close to explaining or describing the actual moments, but this is my best attempt. We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 6am on Tuesday morning, May 17th. This was one week prior to the baby's actual due date because we all needed to be in Atlanta for Meredith's wedding the following weekend.

Monday night, I couldn't sleep. I think the nerves and being anxious about what was going to happen the next day was enough to keep anyone awake! Finally, around 4:30am, I decided to just get up and take a shower and get myself ready to go to the hospital. My parents were here at the house to stay with Madison Claire so once 5:30am rolled around, Ryan and I left for the hospital. Here I am at the house right before we left:

We took the Camry to the hospital so my parents could have the Pilot with Madison Claire's car seat. At one point on the interstate, the car made a funny sound and both Ryan and I thought we might break down on the way to the hospital! Thankfully we made it there okay! On the way to the hospital, I told Ryan that I was nervous about 2 things. The first was the labor/delivery process because everyone kept telling me that I was still carrying him so high. I wasn't sure what this would mean when they induced the labor, and anticipated that I would have to labor and push longer than I did with Madison Claire. I also shared with him that I was nervous about the baby breastfeeding well and sleeping well. When I was pregnant with Madison Claire I prayed faithfully about those 2 things, but based on everything going on in our lives the last few months, I hadn't really prayed about those things for this baby, and that had me worried.

We arrived at Baptist right on time at 6am and got all checked-in. Here we are checking in:

It seemed to take forever for the nurse to come and get us from the waiting room - it was probably 6:45 before they took us back to the room. I had 2 nurses for the first hour or so - my primary nurse was Sarah and there was another nurse, Suzanne, who was helping her. They started by trying to put an IV in my hand to run the pitocin and after 2 failed attempts they had to call in the IV specialists to insert the IV. They said that I was dehydrated and that my veins were small...it was really painful when they couldn't get the IV in and my left hand proceeded to be almost excruciatingly sore for the next few days. When the IV specialist came in, she got it in in less than 5 seconds...wish that she would have been there from the beginning!

Before they started the pitocin, they measured me and I was already at 5cm! I couldn't believe it! They finally got the pitocin started around 7:15am or so and began monitoring my contractions.
Dr. Macey came in around 8am and broke my water, confirmed that I was at 5cm and said he thought that the baby would be here by noon! I couldn't believe it. I asked for the epidural around 9:30am or so and the same sweet IV specialist came in and let me know that she was in training to be an anesthesiologist and asked if it would be okay if she did my epidural. An expert was there with her so I said okay. I thought to myself - everyone has to learn at some point or we wouldn't have any highly trained anesthesiologists, so made myself a test patient. This turned out to be a mistake...oh well! It took forever for the epidural to get in...probably around 15 minutes or so and once it got in it was pretty apparent to me that it was only working on my left side because I could still feel the contractions pretty intensely on my right side. I let my nurse know so they came back in and basically "topped off" my epidural with more medicine. All that did was make my left side go more numb! So at this point, my left side is completely dead...I can't even move my leg if I wanted to, and my right side feels every contraction...i.e. PAINFUL! After about another 20 minutes, they came in and pulled the catheter out a little to see if that would help and it didn't. At this point, I was in tears when a contraction would come but the only option would be to totally remove and re-do the epidural. That scared me too so I kept going back and forth in my mind about whether I was just going to fight through it or ask for them to re-do the epidural. I asked my nurse to check my progress because if I still had a way to go, I was going to have the epidural done again and if I was close, I was just going to push through it. She checked me and I was fully dilated and ready to push!! So she called Dr. Macey and everything went pretty quickly from there.

Once Dr. Macey arrived, I only had to push through 4 contractions and the baby was here! Funny side note - they had Ryan holding my very dead left leg during this time and after the first contraction that I pushed through, they stopped me and everyone in the room turned to Ryan and asked if he was going to be okay. They told him he could sit down and they could get someone else because they thought he looked a little pale! They even pulled up a chair behind him but he hung in there! Dr. Macey said that the baby came out pursing his lips. Ryan cut the cord and they handed the baby to me. He was precious!!! Here is Ryan holding the baby (which I know you can't see because of the angle) right after he was born and the nurses wrapped him up.

Here I am holding the baby for the first time after he was wrapped up.

First shot with mommy & daddy
The side of his face had a bad rash that they say is common in healthy newborns but he had a bad case of it. It actually covered his whole body and lasted for about a week.

He weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. He was born at 11:45am.

Our great nurse, Sarah. Quick note about Sarah - she was getting married the next weekend so we had fun talking about her wedding. I also learned that her fiance works in the healthcare space and might be a good candidate for Huron so being the good recruiter that I am, I talked with her about the opportunity and gave her my business card for her to give her husband to be!
When I was in labor with Madison Claire, my family and Ryan's family were in and out of the labor/delivery room up until the time when I needed to push. This time, because of the pain I was feeling, it was just Ryan and I the entire time. My parents and Ryan's parents both arrived at the hospital just before he was born and got to come back to see him after I fed him. We made it to the recovery area around 4pm - it took quite a while because it took so long for the epidural to wear off on my left side.

Annie brought Madison Claire around 5pm and she was priceless. I have her reaction on video and will try to post it sometime next week. In the meantime, here are some pictures...she was so curious and sweet with him!










The proud Grandparents:


If this isn't the cutest little face you ever did see! He was such a great baby in the hospital - slept like 4-5 hour chunks of time, ate like a champ, and seriously never cried!! My recovery was also 1000 times better than it was with Madison Claire. I was up and moving around by late that evening and felt good the next day.


Don't know what I would do without Annie!!


Already loving his thumb...just like his big sissy!


Madison Claire having fun with me in the hospital bed

Baby is going to LOVE his nanny Annie!
I have this same shot of Ryan with Madison Claire and it is one of my favorites!!

We had some friends visit us at the hospital - thanks to Leslie, Danny, and the Williamsons!




We didn't have a name for him until Thursday morning. We had it narrowed down to 3 or 4, but had a hard time pulling the trigger. We finally decided to name him Ryan Sean-Michael McSwain. His nickname will be "Mac". We knew we wanted to use the name Sean to honor Ryan's brother who died during childbirth but we also knew that we didn't want that to be the name we called him. We also wanted to use Ryan and thought about Ryan Sean McSwain, but Ryan really didn't like the way that sounded - he thought the middle name needed another syllable, hence the Sean-Michael. Madison Claire called him "Baby Mac" all throughout my pregnancy and it just kind of stuck as a nickname. That will also help with the confusion when we are with my family and there are 3 Ryans in the house!!

We let the nursery keep the baby both nights we were in the hospital and of course he was an angel for them...they brought him to me every 4-5 hours to eat and then would take him back...oh how nice that was! Thursday morning, after I finished the early morning feeding, this was the view from my bed...as if God were saying goodmorning to me & Baby Mac. We spent the rest of Thursay morning getting our things together and getting ready to go home.












We made it home around lunch time...note the Jersey Mikes & Sonic drink...fitting for us!!! We have been so blessed in the last 2 weeks with this sweet baby. More to come really soon on our first night home and all of the things that have happened since...