Homerun!

I can't remember the labor all that well now, but I totally remember the surgery.  I hope I go through that thing that happens to moms that makes them forget the labor and delivery so I forget the c-section.  It wasn't bad, it was just scary.  I was wheeled into the room and there where two things I remember seeing, the clock and a rack with cubbies labeled with medical items in them.  There was a sign on it that said something about not closing the patient up until all the cubbies have their proper medical item returned to it.  I think that made me feel better.

The room was really cold and that together with my hormones going crazy and being scared out of my underware, I was shaking like crazy.  I could feel all of the tugging and movements, but none of the pain.  I was terrified, but there really wasn't anything to be scared of.  I just didn't know what to expect and I wasn't at all prepared to have surgery.  They brought Mike into the room and had him walk by my open body.  They sat him down on my side of the blue curtain that blocked my view of my chest down.  We hung out and then a while later, out of no where, they told Mike to stand up and see his new baby.  He barely had time to stand up before they whisked the baby away, at which point I completely forgot why I was there and was completely consumed with myself.  It didn't register that they had just taken the baby out.  It was like I was there for unrelated reasons.  It was strange.  Mike was taken with the baby so I was by myself.  I have no clue where Mike went or what he was doing at this time.  I should ask him.  I was lying there waiting for a while for them to put me back together.  Hum, I can't seem to remember anything about this part.  I don't think I remember getting wheeled out. I just remember waking up in the little curtain area for recovery.  Once again, I didn't know I had a baby at this point.  I remember seeing my Mike and my mom.  Someone handed me the baby to nurse him and to get my one-on-one time with him.  I sort of remember looking at him, but not really.  I remember being really happy about breast feeding him.

My memory cuts to being wheeled to my room, after that, I don't know what happened.  At different points in time, people would come to visit.  I could hear them, but their voices weren't coming from their mouths, it was like people were just sitting in front of me and there was a speaker in the ceiling that their voice came out of.  I must have been heavily drugged.  There was a lot of fuzziness and loopiness.

I do remember seeing the baby with a gigantic club on his hand.  They had wrapped his hand because his little IV thingy was snagging on things.  It looked so sad.  He had to get antibiotics because I had infections.  He wasn't strong enough to control his wrapped hand, so it was all over the place and his little fingers were smashed and stuck in the same position the whole time.  Poor thing!  When they took the wrap off, his hand kept floating into the air.  I assume without the weight and bulk, his hand just kept moving up.  It was kind of funny in a really sad way.

I went into the hospital on Sunday, had the c-section on Monday, and was discharged on Thursday.  In my head, it was more like, I went in on Monday, had the baby, and then two days later, I was discharged.  I think I was with it by the time Wednesday came around.  I got to eat broth and apple juice.  Yay.  Nurses, doctors, volunteers, people taking my vitals, people taking the babies vitals, people cleaning, people with form after form to fill out where all in and out of the room.  Everything is a blur and I don't remember anything that any of them told me.



Anyway, I'm glad we made it out alive with an extra little dude!

The Pitch

Alright, where was I?  Oh, right, the pain and suffering.  So, I've got the gown on, IV in, 5cm dilated, and Mike coaching me through contractions.  They have me walk to the room I would supposedly stay in for the rest of the time.  I end up changing rooms, I assume because it's a different room for c-section people.  I don't remember a lot of this part and it all kind of runs together.  I do remember that the nurse was checking my temperature to make sure I didn't get an infection after the doctor broke my water and she didn't believe the thermometer.  As if it was inexplicable for me to have a fever.  I did, but she wheeled in another thermometer machine since she didn't trust the one in the room.  She even ended up taking her own temperature.  She kept showing me her temperature and I really didn't care.  They pumped me full of antibiotics and then at some point they gave me a breathing treatment. I don't remember what happened to spur them to do that.  After that they made me wear an oxygen mask.  Mike was standing above me asking me questions.  After a nap, I remember turning to Mike and he looked so surprised to see a mask.  I guess he was so tired the first time he spoke to me with the mask on, he didn't notice it (even though it took up 3/4 of my face).  Weird.

I think that's all I remember of the events leading up to the big event, and I'm not even sure I got the order of what I do remember right.  I was so tired and it is all a big blur.  I do remember the doctor walking in to check how dilated I was.  I was at 9cm for a while and I was still there.  She told me to push a couple times to see if it helped.  I was like, "wait, is this it?  Is this THE pushing?".  I guess it wasn't, but it felt so close and exciting because I was pushing!  I was really happy.  I took a deep breath and pushed.  It felt weird because I've never tried to push a baby out, so it was really weak and uneventful.  I turned to the doctor and said, "Oops, wait, let me try that again.  I don't know what I'm doing.".  She smiled and told me to try again.  It was weird again, but better.  It's just so strange to push when you've seen it in movies so many times and it seems really straight forward, but it didn't feel easy at that moment.  She looked at me and told me that it didn't help.  She told me that I wasn't progressing and that I could wait another 2 hours and see what happens or have a c-section.  That was the first time the c-word had come up.  I looked at the clock and it was 10:55am.  I had been in labor for 32 hours at this point.  I asked what she recommended and she told me a c-section.  I felt tears running down my face and I said, "Okay, I'll have a c-section.  Do what you gotta do.".  There was an instant explosion of activity and flood of people in the room.  The doctor said that she had a different c-section scheduled for 11am that she would bump.  I was like, hey, I'm cool, you don't have to bump anyone.  I didn't realize how urgent my condition was because of the infection.  They gave Mike scrubs to put on and some guy was explaining the anesthesia to me and what I needed to do.  I was only half listening.  There was a clock in the operating room.  They wheeled me into the room a little after 11:00 am.  At 11:15am I was getting sliced and diced.

The Wind Up

Let's set the scene...it's Sunday morning and I'm asleep.  Okay, scene is set.  I wake up to pee but I'm still groggy so when I look at the clock and see 3:25 I am confused why the stove is set to 325.  When I start waking up, I realize that I'm looking at a clock, not the stove temperature.  I feel some abdominal pain and wonder why I have girly-type cramps.  Hum, weird.  The pain doesn't seem to go away.  Maybe I should wake Mike up and tell him.  I decide to wait a couple of minutes to see if it goes away and what do you know?  It went away.  Okay, back to sleep....ouch, there it goes again.  I wake Mike up and tell him, but I still didn't understand what it was.  Then we realize that they are coming and going (clue number one) so we start timing them.  Could this be labor pains?  It's not what I thought it would feel like, so I'm skeptical.  The pains get worse and worse and closer together.  I was a little hungry so I snarfed down a bowl of cereal.  There's no harm in making my stomach happy.  By mid-morning I'm in bed moaning like a lady in labor (clue number two).  I'm still skeptical, but I decided to eat a hardy breakfast, just in case.  I had eggs, pancakes, waffles, and a hash brown.  I may have been hungry.  We decide to go to the hospital late in the morning because the pains were 3 or 4 min apart (clue number 3).  I thought they were going to tell us that these were some derivative of Braxton-Hicks, but instead they admitted me and I even got to take the back-way wheelchair ride to Labor and Delivery.  The ride, by the way, was kind of scary because the lady was pushing me so fast down the hallways.  I thought I was going to fall out of the chair.  I was like, "Gosh lady, where's the emergency".  Typing that out just now, I realize that I was the emergency.  Anyway, I should have been thinking about possibly having a baby, but instead I was internally criticizing how fast she was going.  So we get there and they hook me up to monitors and after some monitoring, they tell us that it's happening.  I was like, wait, what's happening?

The nurse tells us to walk around for an hour and then they'd check me to see how much I progress.  Mike and I take a walk around the 3rd floor and then down to the cafeteria while I'm in a hospital robe!  Strangely, I didn't care.  I get a juice and I think Mike got a Snickers and I gave him a hard time about it.  We headed back up and they checked me again and she said, "okay this is it!".  Wow, this is it.  THIS IS IT!  They start prepping me.  They had a guy put in my IV that was trying to get hours in for a promotion.  My recommendation?  FIRE HIM.  Fire him and then fire needles at him.  As he's trying to jab the IV into my arm with his body weight behind it like a battering ram, a woman watching him told him that he was doing it wrong.  YOU THINK?  Then she said that he had ruptured my vein and he had to stop.  He then tries again about half way down on my forearm.  You know, that real tough muscle part of your arm?  For those unable to pick up the sarcasm, that part of my arm resembles the delicacy of a Faberge egg.  He does the same battering ram move.  This time he collapsed my valve.  I'm paralyzed with fear and pain but Mike had enough and said that he didn't get any more tries.  They guy said, "I get 3 tries".  Mike just says, "You get 2."  Needless to say, with blood running all over my hand, the guy stopped and a nurse shoved an IV into my other arm, on the side part, below my wrist.  As a side note, later on a different nurse asked if she could redo my IV since it wasn't in right.  I almost stabbed her.  The whole time this is happening, I'm having contractions, it was fun.

It's like basting a turkey

39 Weeks

I have become morbidly obese.  My coworkers are surprised everyday I come to work.  One woman gasped last week when I turned sideways even though I didn't know who she was.  She apologized that she gasped.  I was so sure that I would have had the baby by now!  He's still in there and there are no signs that he's going to come out.  I know that he's going to come out one way or another, but there's a tiny piece of me that keeps thinking that he's going to stay in there.  I don't think that there are signs of anything happening.  I keep feeling little things here or there and swear that it's a sign, but then nothing happens.  For example, I'll get out ... or rather, roll out of bed and get a muscle pain and take in a big breath to exclaim, "Mike, it's time!".  But then I realize that it's just because I strained my muscles with my massive weight rolling out of bed <big exhale>.

The baby has been doing a new thing lately.  I'm not sure what exactly is going on in there and I'm not even sure I can explain the feeling, but I'll try because he seems to like doing it...a lot, especially to my left side.  This happens almost every day now.  If you watch the Food Network constantly like I do, especially around Thanksgiving, they show you how to do stuff to turkeys.  This feels like that thing they do where they put their hand between the skin and turkey meat and wiggle their fingers to separate the skin from the meat in order to put things like butter and herbs in there.  Yes, that's what it feels like, minus the butter and herbs.  I don't know if that's okay or not, or if he's really separating my skin from my muscle (what little muscle is left).  Ew.

Leg, punching bag... same thing

It's official, I'm gigantic.  No, like, really big.  When I sit, my Budda belly pushes against my legs.  I think there's so much belly pressure against my legs that the baby starts punching my legs to tell me that I'm squishing him.  What the heck?  I didn't know that was possible.  People at work really want to rub my belly, but once the get within an inch or so, they switch to a hover around a crystal ball movement.

It's not so bad, but besides not eating hot dogs, the sleepless nights, and my new kankles, it's pumpkin latte time and I'm missing out.  I'm kind of sad.  I stood in front of the pumpkin latte poster eating it with my eyes like I do every morning at work with the doughnuts in the cafeteria at work.

Monkeys and the Mechanical Engineer

I had my Tuscon region baby shower!  The baby got so many gifts and little clothes.  There were cute little monkey decorations and great cake.  I may have accidentally ate 3 pieces of cake.  It wasn't all at once, it was kind of over several hours, and besides, I'm pregnant so it's totally okay.  I went through all the baby gifts and organized them and then re-organized them.  Mike put a bunch of stuff together and it didn't take him long at all.  I think he liked putting it all together : ).  So, I think we're all set now!  I'm pretty sure we're ready, but I don't really know since I've never done this before.  There are some more things I'd like to get done, but they're not "need to do" type of things.  But, I'm so big now that I don't think I could do any of them very easily anymore.  I'm so big that a girl at the checkout said that she was pregnant with 6 pound twins and she said that she wasn't as big as me.

Oh ya, it's Mike's baby

33 weeks

People are so nice to pregnant people!  I dropped a jello box at the store and someone came over to pick it up before I could finish thinking about how to pick it up.  So many people have come up to me and just started talking to me, asking me questions, or making fat jokes (e.g. "lay off the beer, man").  Although, I'm still getting the "are you having twins" question quite a bit.  I will give them some credit because we had an ultra sound done and they estimated that the baby is 5 pounds!  The Internet indicates that he should have been 3 3/4 pounds.  This is going to be one healthy baby boy!  The woman doing the ultrasound was impressed at how well his hair showed up and said that he must have a lot of hair.  It showed up as little wispy tufts in the ultrasound.  It was crazy and more than amazing, it was crazamazing.  I think he's going to look like Mike, which I'm pretty happy about, in case there was any doubt that it's Mike's baby.  : )

Anyway, we did our first load of baby laundry!  I didn't know if all of it should be washed or just the newborn to 3 month old clothes, but if this baby is really 5 pounds right now, he will be wearing everything in the first month so I should wash all of it.  So, I washed all of it.