The Penner Clan: Riley Renee Penner

I turned 36 weeks on Saturday, August 12th. Yeah! Well, on the Thursday prior, my doctor had taken me off of all of my medications. Since Thursday, I had had an increase in contractions, but nothing painful and they wouldn't do anything anyways, so I went with it. It was REALLY HOT on Saturday. Jed and I had a birthday party in the morning. We both came home hot and ready to nap. I woke up with some low back pain. I thought I slept weird. It persisted which tipped me off that I may be in labor. At about 8:00, I was questioning what to do. We decided to do nothing, wait it out and go to our appointment on Monday morning. As the night continued, I was growing more concerned and decided that if the pain woke me up, I would go in and get checked. We went to bed around 11:00.

At about 1:00am I woke up with pain that wrapped around to the front... I woke Jesse up and called Chelsey to come sleep at the house with Jed. My bags were all packed because I knew it could be any time. Jesse decided he didn't need anything because we were both sure we were coming home in a few hours...

When we arrived at the hospital, they checked me and I was dilated to a 3-4 and 80% effaced. Well... we were in labor! I was moved to a labor room and they re-checked me at 4:00. The contractions were not consistent and I had not changed at all. My nurse didn't think I was in labor but wanted to wait for Dr. Swanson (the doctor on call) to arrive around 8:00 to see what he thought. We saw him around 8:30 and I again had not changed but he said... "you will be back in a few hours in labor, so what do you want to do?" ... Let's have a baby!

Jed came to visit us. It was so great to see him one last time before our family grew!

Our nurse was a friend of Jesse's from high school. She was wonderful, and it was so nice to know her!

At around 8:30, after he checked me, my contractions started coming more consistently every 2-3 minutes. He came in and broke my water at around 10:00. Then the pain came... I had contractions every 1-2 minutes. We were waiting for Dr. Madsen to come give me my epidural. He is a friend from work and offered to do my epidural and also came for Jedidiah's delivery. He arrived after church at around 10:30 and got that epidural in at 10:45... thank goodness!

Ouchie... contractions during an epidural = no fun!

After the epidural, they checked me and I was dilated to a 9... we labored down for about an hour.

Baby stuff is ready...

Getting ready to push.

After pushing for about 10 minutes, baby arrived! Miss Riley Renee Penner was born on Sunday, August 12th at 12:05pm. She weighted 6 lb 12oz and was 18 inches long.