August 8, 2008

  • It's a boy!

    We had a beautiful baby boy at 8:58 am on July 26th!  He weighed 9 lbs and measured 19 3/4 inches long.  I have no idea how he fit inside me!

    It was a very exciting birth - mostly because I was scheduled for a c-section a full week later on August 1st.  However, I woke up at 3am on 7/26 with contractions.  I just lay in bed half asleep in denial for almost three hours.  I was convinced it was false labor since my due date was not until 8/6.  However, around 5:30 am a couple other things happened (I'll spare you the gross details) that made me realize it was real labor.  I called the doctor who said to drink 4 glasses of water and then come to the hospital to get checked.  Then I woke up my poor husband who almost had a heart attack when I said, "Get. Up. I. Am. In. Labor."  He looked at me like he didn't know what the word "labor" meant.

    By 6:30am, we were at the Birth Center and my mom was home with our other 2 kids.  The nurse was slowly hooking me up to monitors and chatting away between my contractions.  On a happy note, we went to high school together and I vaguely remember as a fellow band geek - so it was a lot of fun when she had to give me an internal exam.  Especially when her eyes shot open wide and she said "Oh YEAH - you're having this baby today!"  I was already at 5 centimeters.

    This was right about the time I started to pretend I was on an episode of ER.  Nurses and doctors were rushing in talking about "calling in another team" and "postponing another surgery" and "this is her 3rd c-section, we've got to roll".  It was a Saturday morning, so apparently there wasn't enough surgical staff at the hospital so they paged a whole team.  They gave me a shot of muscle relaxers to stop the contractions because they said it would take a while to get the OR ready.  Then 10 minutes later, the doctor comes back in and says "No, we are doing this now.  We can't risk her getting to 10 cm."  They ended up making the poor guy who needed an appendectomy wait. 

    I was vacillating between total excitement and immense fear.  We had no name!  We didn't know where our infant car seat was!  Who will take care of our kids for the next 4 days!??  We had no name!  My fellow band geek is helping me strip down and get into a Johnny!  We had no name!  I AM NOT READY FOR THIS!!!!

    To make a long story short, the c-section was kind of grueling because I had built up so much scar tissue from my previous 2 c-sections.  I could hear the doctor doing a lot of grunting and groaning as she tried to pull the baby out.  It took a long time. Oh, and did I mention that Band Geek Nurse accompanied us to the OR as did my neighbor who happens to be a midwife?  It was surreal.  Anyway, they had to make some extra cuts in my uterus to get the baby out because he was so big and there was so much scar tissue.  The good news is that he was born safely and is perfectly healthy.  The bad news is that I can't have any more kids because of it. 

    They finally pulled the baby out and somebody yelled, "IT'S A BOY!"  This was another total shock to me.  I was convinced I had a girl in there.  When they wrapped him up and my husband brought him around the curtain for me to see, I just stared at him.  Here was a boy...a week early.  It really threw me for a loop.  I was expecting a girl on August 1st. 

    But who cares!???!!  He's beautiful and perfect and very healthy.

     

    In postpartum news:  a Juicy Juice commercial just made me cry!

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