Rya had her babies! Valentine babies.

Sunday morning Stephanie and Leanne walked in to the bathroom to check on Rya. She unfortunately was out and behind the toilet but after putting her back in the tub. They realized the rock back behind the toilet wasn't a rock. It was a baby!
Running through the house, screaming they called me. I unfortunately did not get out of bed for an hour, so I missed the call. haha
This weekend we had taken a Doula class and we each got a binder full of info. After the class we were able to take the binders home and we used them!
After church, Stephanie,Samuel and I sat beside the bathtub all day waiting for more babies. We had our binders and food (m&m's and coke).
Rya seemed to not be moving along for most of the morning but in late afternoon it picked up again. She would jump around and then at contractions she would lay down. While laying down she would have straw in her mouth to bite on. She was fun to watch and adorable.
Around 8p.m. she still did not have the babies and we were getting worried. Steph and I did some research and found a site on stuck babies. This sounded like what she had been doing all day.
The site said that we should "put vaseline on cervix (vent). Using two fingers, gently pull babies with contractions."
We quickly changed into scrubs and got our gear ready. We fought a little about who would actually be sticking their fingers in the mother. I was ready; I had my gloves on and getting my Vaseline ready when we noticed her odd behavior.
She was building a borrow in the nesting box out of hay and hair. She would build up a good nest, then she would tear it down because it wasn't perfect. We realized that she probably needed more hay. As soon as we got back with another basket of hay, she quickly began to build again. We thought that maybe leaving her alone would help her progress but we realized that when we were gone, she would just lay there and breathe heavily. But once we came back in, she would start pushing. We have come to the conclusion that she was comforted by our presence. Just like humans need doulas to comfort them, we were there to talk to her and massage her and we even used the exercise ball and warm rice bags. She sat in her nest and began to push. Within minutes she had given birth to nine more kits. She stopped between each birth to take the baby from its sac, eat its umbilical cord and wash it off. When Steph told Samuel that "this is the miracle of life!" he replyed "no, this is a bathroom, you nice lady." Samuel is hilarious, yet odd. Samuel was/is fascinated by the babies. He loves holding them and giving them kisses; he is a great daddy! He also loves teaching them about 'boobie'.