Welcome Little One!

~
Born at 11:59 pm on July 14, 2011



... At 7 lbs, 12 oz and 19 inches long...


... AND after 4 weeks of bed rest...


...Baby K has made her grand debut!


Welcome to the family, little one! We are so glad to meet you!

T - 18 hours

~
In 18 hours, I am going to be induced.

This has been a loooooooooooooooooooooooong day.

It feels like seconds are minutes, minutes are hours, hours are days, and today is a week long.

The thing is, toward the end of a pregnancy every day feels long. Every twinge, pain, gasp, contraction brings on a "Is this it?!" thought process. But it normally isn't and time still drags on, with you waiting, waiting, waiting...

I'm not good at waiting.

My husband and I went to the doctor today... he checked me. Baby K is not "engaged" but I am 1 cm dilated and 100% effaced. So tomorrow at 8 am, when he is the doctor on the floor, he will induce me.

He seems worried that the pitocin won't work. I tried to reassure him - I was given pitocin with both of my other kids and once they got that fun drug pumping into me, I gave birth within 7 hours. But he is laying out all sorts of alternate plans, in case the pitocin won't work. It's mildly frustrating/irritating. It's my body and I know it will work, but he doesn't seem to hear me.

So we wait. And I'm antsy. My mom is here to help with the kids - so my husband and I got to go to breakfast and a movie. But now it's 2:30 in the afternoon and he and my mom are out running around with the kids and I'm bored and thinking about tomorrow.

I know I should rest, or read, or relax. But I just can't seem too. I'm a bundle of nervous energy, waiting for tomorrow morning, waiting to meet my daughter, waiting for something to happen.

How am I going to get through the next 18 hours?

A Letter to My Son on his 16th Birthday

Before my children were born, I decided to write letters to them that they could open on their birthdays. Since I figured they would not be able to read when they were born, I addressed the letters with instructions to be opened starting on their 13th birthday. I wrote a letter when I was pregnant, a letter on the day the baby was born, and I write a letter every year on their birthday. Today is my son's second birthday, so he gets to open this letter when he turns 16...

To My Darling Boy:

I'm not sure what I want to say to you today... My heart is overflowing with love, but my body is exhausted from chasing you around all day. Today you are sixteen, and I hope and pray that you are running me as ragged now as you did today, the day you turned 2. After all, life wouldn't be any fun if I didn't have you to keep me on my toes.

This past year has been joyful and exhausting, terrifying and exhilarating. I get teary eyed as I think of 16 year old you - you are on the cusp of manhood and I can't wait to meet the man you become. But at the same time, I weep when I think I am losing the sweet, sticky little boy who yells, "Mommy!" and comes running over to give me a hug whenever I enter a room.

You are a loving two year old, asking for my hand to hold, Mommy's "uppie" for a cuddle, or screaming "NO!" when you want to run, climb, or crawl when I want to carry you. I am going to miss your solid little body snuggled up next to me on the couch, your chubby little hand grasping mine, your giggles as I tickle your round belly, and your screams for "again, again!"

This coming year, your three year old year, is going to bring changes. You are going to go from the baby to the middle child. And two year old James is uncertain about that. Everyday you tell me, "No baby. MY mommy." I hope that 16 year old James is comfortable with being the middle child, and I hope you realize that you will always be my baby, my boyo, my sweetheart. You hold a special place in my heart, not for being second born, not for being a boy, but for being mine.

I am proud to know that you are becoming your own person, someone independent from me. I can only hope that, as you turn 16, your father and I have given you the right lessons to help you become a strong, independent, generous, sensitive man.

What are my hopes for 16 year old James? I hope you are smart enough not to out think your common sense; that you trust yourself to listen to your intuition. I hope that you are still that loving boy you were when you were two, but that you are not afraid to speak your own mind, regardless of what people may think of you. I know the teenage years are hard, and I know that being an independent thinker can make them harder. Don't be afraid to say no to your friends, and if they give you crap for it, they aren't your friends. I hope that you are not afraid to be an independent thinker, that you are brave enough to fight injustice in your life, to let your voice be heard, and to protect those who cannot do so for themselves.

And what advice do I have for you, my 16 year old boy? Just this, the same thing that I say daily to two year old Boyo: Be careful! And remember, being able to do something and thinking you can do something are two very different things. I'm not saying don't try; I'm telling you to try. Try with all your being to accomplish your goals, so that years later, when you look back, you will have no regrets and you can honestly say, "I gave it everything I had." Thinking you can do something is the beginning. It is the start of a goal; it requires hard work, effort, and time. Being able to do something is your reward for those things. I hope that we have raised you to not be afraid of working hard, giving a strong effort, and spending time trying to achieve your goals.

You are my baby, my sweet boy. (I don't care that you are sixteen now, you are still my baby.)
I love you so much, and I hope you know you can talk to me about anything.

Love,
Mom

My Son's Birth Story

I did it for my daughter, and now I have to record my son's birth story, before I forget...

On December 10, 2008, I was getting my daughter ready for daycare. I was due to give birth in a week, and while my daughter didn't go to daycare every day, she did go fairly often: on days when I had doctor's appointments (which, since I was a gestational diabetic, meant I went to the doctor 3 days a week).

I had just squatted down to pick her up and put her in the car when I heard a pop and felt fluid in my underwear. "Hmm," I remember thinking. "Did I just have an accident, or did my water just break?"

I was praying that I had peed my pants. See, it was my husband's and my anniversary, and we had decided to spring for a sitter - a rare treat. It was going to be our last date night before the baby was born and our lives spun out of control for a little bit.

I called my mom to ask her, but she didn't answer the phone, so I didn't think much of it. I took my daughter to school, I came home, showered, and picked up the house. I wasn't feeling any contractions, but still -- that rush of fluid was on the back of my mind, worrying me. So I called my husband, told him my water might have broken, and drove myself to the hospital.

The nurse checked me and and swabbed at my, um, nether regions with a little strip to test for amniotic fluid. If my water had broken, she said, the strip would turn blue. If not, they would send me on my way. When I pointed out I wasn't feeling any contractions, she just laughed and said, "Honey, we can start those right up for you."

The strip turned navy.

Then nurse laughed again when I asked if they could start the contractions tomorrow. After all, it was date night. "No," she said, hooking me up to an IV. "You're having a baby today."

I called my husband, told him my water definitely had broken and that he needed to leave work and come to the hospital. While I waited for him, I pulled out my schoolwork and tried to read. Oh, did I mention that I was in my MA program at the time? And it was finals week?

My husband showed up and asked if I would mind if he took a nap. Since we were both expecting the 36 hour ordeal we had with our daughter, I said sure.

The contraction-starter-medicine kicked in, and it kicked in HARD. Within two hours, I was writhing in the bed, whimpering in pain. My husband was napping in the cot they had provided him. I threw my book at him to wake him up; if I was hurting, then damn it, he was going to witness it.

The contraction monitor was shooting over a 100. A nurse came in to reset it and commented that I seemed a tad "uncomfortable."

"You think?" I snarled back.

"Do you want me to call the anesthesiologist?" she asked, patting my hand.

"No," I said, at the same time my husband said "Yes."

The nurse looked at me and then at my husband and then back at me. "Why not?" she asked.

"I want to try to do this without medication," I said. "I want the epidural, just not yet. I want to feel it, to know that I tried..." I would have gone on, but right then I was hit by a contraction so hard my body jack knifed like I was the little girl in the Exorcist.

To the nurse's credit, she didn't roll her eyes at me. "And now you've felt it," she said. "And it hurts. You are at 6 cm. It's only going to get worse."

"I know, but..." I whimpered.

"We don't give you a medal when you check out, you know," she said in a no-nonsense tone. "We give you a baby. And you need to be rested so you can take care of it."

I agreed to the epidural.

[To those of you out there who firmly believe medication only has a place in a birthing room for extreme cases: Good for you. I'm happy that is the choice you made. This was the choice I made. The nurse was right; I needed my rest, not to reenact the Exorcist. And they didn't give me a medal. They gave me a newborn baby boy with colic. I'm grateful for the epidural because it allowed me to take a nap - the last nap I got for over a year. So please, no comments on my decision for an epidural or the nurse offering me one.]

And then I went to sleep for five hours.

The nurse came in at seven, checked on me, and said, "Wow, you are ready to go! Shift change is here, though, so we are just going to let you hold tight; the night nurse is going to help with your delivery."

"Wait," my husband said. "If she's ready to go, shouldn't we be pushing NOW?"

"No, it's fine," the nurse said, backing out of the door. It was obvious she was trying to get away...I hope she had really important plans. More important than my having a baby.

So we were left to our own devices for about on hour. An hour that I spent shaking with adrenaline.

To be fair to the night nurse, she was great. She walked in right at 8 and said, "So, we're having a baby in about five minutes, huh?"

She got everything all set up and then said, "Okay, Shannon, I'm going to have you do a couple practice pushes with me, so we can see if we have to turn off the epidural before we call the doctor in. Push on one... two... thr-- STOP!"

"What?" I asked frantically, as my husband started to laugh. "What's wrong?"

"The baby's crowning," my husband told me, kissing my forehead. "They had you wait too long."

The nurse ran for the doctor, who came in 30 seconds later, positioned himself at the end of the bed and nodded. My son was born three pushes later. He literally just slid out. (I know. I hate women who say that too. But after an hour of waiting... well, he was ready.)

They didn't give him to me right away. Everything was hazy, and I remember thinking that was odd, so when I looked down, my heart stopped. Boyo was blue. Not your normal, baby hasn't pinked up yet blue, he was umbilical cord wrapped twice around his neck, around each limb, and around his stomach blue. The doctor studied the knot my son had tied himself in and started twisting and turning the baby until he wasn't blue anymore. He was red. And screaming. And pissed. And it was beautiful.

I should also mention that because he had been slamming against my cervix for so long, he had a second head. Not a conehead, like most vaginal births, he had a perfectly round bump at the top of his head, about two inches wide and half an inch thick. It looked like he was a mad scientist.

"That's perfectly normal," the doctor said, reassuringly. At least, it would have been reassuringly if he wasn't pressing on the bump, trying to make it go back down.

Throughout all of this, I was focusing on my boy. I'll admit it, I was apprehensive. Yes, I know that I all ready had a baby at home. You would have thought that I was used to this. But I was scared of him. Why? Because he was a boy. I didn't know what to do with a boy. He was the first boy in my family in 40 years. And yes, you would have thought that in the 18 or so weeks I knew I was carrying a boy, that I would have gotten used to the idea. I didn't. (I'm mildly ashamed to admit that I was hoping the ultrasound was wrong, and that he would really be a girl. I know. I know. I had an ultrasound every week for the last 6 weeks because of the diabetes, but I was still clinging to that last ray of hope. I'm a horrible mother.)

So I was focusing on my boy, and getting more and more nervous. And then the nurse finished his bath, wrapped him in his blanket, and put him in my arms. And when Boyo looked at me, I caught my breathe, I couldn't help it. He had this very serious, old man look in his eyes (which was aided by the mad scientist head bump), and he just stared at me as if to say: You're going to be fine.

And that was it; I was sunk. I started falling in love with him at that moment, and I haven't stopped (I will admit, though, some days I fall in love with him faster than others. Like the six months he had colic. I loved him, but man, it was a painful process. But isn't that true of any parent who has a child with colic?)

My son was born December 10, 2008 at 8:07 pm after 9 hours of labor. He weighted 7 lbs, 12 oz and was 19 in long. And he has gone from this:


to this:

My Daughter's Birth Story

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My daughter turns 3 this Saturday, and I've found myself reminiscing about the day she was born. That, coupled with the fact that 5 of my friends have had babies in the past month, made me want to document her birth story. Added bonus? This way she has it forever.
~
I began feeling contractions on June 11th at about 3:30 in the afternoon. They were in no way "progressing" (doctor speak for getting stronger in order to actually push a baby out), but I was eager to meet my daughter and, quite honestly, I was done being pregnant.

So I did all the things they tell you to do to speed labor up. I went on a long walk. I took a shower. I ate spicy foods. Finally, an hour later, I decided I was ready to have my baby girl, regardless of the fact that she was not "progressing."

My husband came home from work and we loaded up the car to go to the hospital. We were quickly admitted, I changed into one of those horrible blue hospital gowns, and I was strapped to a monitor. And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I think my contractions stopped.

Finally, a nurse came in and told me that I was only a half a centimeter dilated, but after reviewing the monitor print out, she told me that I was in the early stages of labor. The sent me home and told me I would probably be back by midnight.

At home, we ate some chicken noodle soup and my husband, after waiting with me for 5 hours, asked if he could go to bed. Sure, I said. I wasn't feeling much pain (you know, the kind you see on TV when a woman goes into labor? Yeah, that was what I was expecting). I was just uncomfortable.

So my husband went to bed and I didn't. Couldn't sleep. Too uncomfortable. So I decided to walk. I grabbed my IPOD and my cell phone, threw on my sneakers, and walked around my neighborhood for an hour.

Oh, did I mention that it was 1 in the morning at this point?

My husband called me, panicked, at 2 when he woke up and I was not in the house. I went home, more and more uncomfortable. I decided that I should start keeping track of my contractions and their duration, but I didn't really know what I was doing, since we were Lamaze dropouts.

Finally, at 4:30 in the morning, after a 4 mile walk and 3 lukewarm showers, I shook my husband awake and told him we were going to the hospital.

"Are you sure this time?" he asked groggily.

I deserve a medal for not smothering him at that moment.

At the hospital, I was told I was two centimeters dilated and they were going to keep me. YEAH! The nurse then made me walk around the damn hospital for two hours. At that point, I demanded an epidural; I was so tired of being uncomfortable. (I am mildly ashamed to admit that I was only 3 centimeters dilated at this point.)

Dr. Wu (may God forever bless this man) showed up and gave me my epidural. I was immediately happy and pain free.

And allergic to the epidural.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I know that I suddenly got chilled, started shaking, alarms went off, and everything went gray. My one clear memory is the terror on my husband's face. Still, two doses of IV Benadryl later, I was good to go.

I was also asleep.

I slept until the epidural wore off at 3 pm when I woke up crying. They gave me another epidural and more Benadryl, and I went back to sleep.

At 9:30 pm, my kind day nurse of the pain free epidural and sleep-inducing Benadryl was gone and had been replaced by evil Nurse Ratched. She abruptly informed me that it was time to push. My room was suddenly full of people - my nurse, baby nurse, Dr. Wu. My OB wasn't there, but since he hadn't been there for much of the pregnancy, I wasn't too surprised. The lights came on. The stirrups came out. My husband was drafted to fold me in half.

I started pushing. And pushing. And pushing.

Nothing happened.

"You aren't trying," Nurse Ratched barked at me. "Push harder!"

I looked at my husband and said rather loudly, because the baby nurse started to laugh, "I do not like this woman!"

She then told me, "You aren't pushing right. We are turning off your epidural."

I think she said that just to punish me for my comment about not liking her. But I was in no position to say anything. I looked at my husband: Do something, I told him telepathically.

"Wait," he said. "What? Why? We were told we could have the epidural through the delivery."

"She can't feel anything and she isn't pushing hard enough," Nurse Ratched snapped at him. "If she was doing it right, I could leave it on."

My husband looked at me and shrugged. Easy for him to be dismissive. He wasn't the one folded in half like an accordion, struggling to push out a watermelon.

So my epidural went off.

Oh. MY. GOD.

OWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! is not a strong enough word.

After 45 minutes, I started crying. "I can't do this," I sobbed. "I want to go home."

My husband rubbed my back, and Nurse Ratched got right in my face. "Shannon," she barked. "If you are going to panic, this is not going to work."

Really?!? What's option 2?!?!?

I think my daughter could tell that I was not happy with Nurse Ratched because just then, my water finally broke all over herand she had to leave.

After that, it was smooth sailing. I vaguely remember yelling at my husband to count faster (his job was to count to 10 while I pushed, so I would know when to rest); my OB finally showing up, talking about basketball; and Dr. Wu shooting me up with something when my daughter crowned (did I say, God Bless that man?). I don't remember much else until I saw my daughter.

The doctor held her up and put her on my chest. There are some moms who say that the world fades at that moment, that all they can focus on is their child. In my case, it's sort of true: I can tell you that Nurse Ratched was telling me to push out the placenta, and the doctor was asking my husband if he wanted to cut the cord. But I ignored them and everything else just wasn't there. I only could see her face; I can't even tell you what my husband was doing at that moment. All I knew is that I had a baby, a sweet, purple and red baby girl who was screaming her head off, and I started to cry.

"Look at what we did," I said to my husband as I gathered my daughter up and pressed a kiss to her purple forehead.

"Hello, preciousest baby girl! Welcome to the world," I whispered, before the baby nurse took her to bath her and give her the APGAR test (which she passed with flying colors, I might add).

My daughter was born at 10:24 pm on June 12, 2007, weighing 8 lbs, 4 oz, and measuring 20.5 inches long after 36 hours of labor.

And she has gone from this:

To this: