Hello, everyone! After a very long hiatus, I have returned to my formerly abandoned blog to catch everyone up on all the things that have been clogging up my brain since December. It's quite a bit and I'm going to try and break things up into more manageable chunks to make it easier to organize my ramblings. So, since I have not blogged since December, there is much to catch everyone up on. I'm not sure where to begin, but I guess I'll start with the little reason this whole blog was created in the first place, Shankapottamus.
As most of you know, Shank, aka monkey, sweet pea, doodle, cutie pie...(I should stop there before I embarrass either me or Shanky any more than I already have) was born on February 4th, 2010 at 1:06 pm. What many of you may not know is the story that goes along with Shank's big reveal. So, here's the story: Nicole and I went to the doctor on Wednesday, February 3, for our weekly appointment. At that time, we started discussing an inducement date and set it up for the following Monday. After that, the doc decided to check me out to see how things were progressing. So, I ever so gracefully put my legs in the stirrups and assumed that ever so sexy position of legs in the air with socks and that lovely 5 o'clock shadow on my calves (of course I shaved in the morning, but I'm a chop so, yes, I had hair on my legs by 3 pm. Don't hate). That's a hot image so far, isn't it? Yeah. I know. So, the doc ducs his head down and more of his limbs disappear beneath the sheet than I am comfortable with and his head suddenly pops up with this look of anxiety and confusion. You know that look, head slightly tilted to the side, eyes appearing perplexed, brows slightly furrowed...yeah, that look. So he says, "Hm. Does anything hurt?"
" No, I'm good. Why?"
"Well, you're 5 centimeters dilated and fully effaced. Do you live close by?"
"Yep"
"Ok, good. Sooooo, if you feel anything when you go home, don't call, just come in. Ok?"
"Yeah, sure".
So, Nicole and I head home and I started doing some stuff around the house when I start to feel a little weird. "Hm. Ok, probably nothing. I'm going to keep...Hm. That's weird. Maybe I should start timing these". So, I grab some paper, a pen, my watch and go back to folding laundry. Well, it didn't take me too long to figure out that these contractions were different from all the other contractions I had been having for the weeks leading up to this day (Remind me to update you all about that in another post if anyone wants to hear about it). Now, I decided not to tell Nicole about this immediately because I wasn't sure how she would initially react and I wanted her to clean up around the house a little more and I knew if I told her what was going on, we would have been done in that department. Therefore, like a crazy, emotionally unstable, psycho with a ponch, I start yelling at her to do different things in the house. Understandably, she did not respond to my demeanor very well, but assumed I was just cranky, and started in on the things I asked her to do. As my contractions went from 10 minutes apart to 4 minutes apart in less than 30 minutes, I got more worked up and screamed at her even more. Finally, she yelled back, "What the hell is the matter with you?!?!?"
"I'm in labor, damn it! My contractions are like 4 minutes apart and my back is freaking killing me!!! That's the problem! Now, MOVE IT!"
At that, the color drained from her face, she went, "Oh!" and ran into the other room. I decided to change into more comfortabe clothing and have something to eat, so I heated up some leftovers (Indian food...way bad choice) and sat down to eat. By this time, I had been having contractions for about 2 hours and my body said, "You know, um, they have drugs at the hospital".
"Nicole, I think we should go".
At that, we jumped in the car and headed to UCONN. As soon as we got there, we stopped in to my doctor's office and the nurse kind of looked at me and said, "Uh, yeah. The doctor is in with someone right now. If you want, you can wait, buuuut, I think you could probably head downstairs and he'll meet you there". As soon as we got downstairs to the unit, the nurses were ready for me and had me in a room and changed into a gown within 10 minutes. My nurse, Jackie (who was AWESOME) asked, "Now, do you have a birth plan in mind? Do you want to deliver naturally or..." Before she could finish, I basically told her the only natural thing I was wanting to do was to have an epidural as quickly as possible, naturally. I also then asked her if it would be possible to have an IV of whiskey. She laughed and told me she was Irish and saide she would LOVE to give me the IV whiskey but she hadn't figured out a way to do that yet, which was particularly sad for her because she is Irish.
A few minutes later, the anesthesiologist (and his intern) come in to the room and I find out that the intern is going to "do me" but the anesthesiologist is going to supervise (little comfort, but the contractions really kind of put that into perspective). The nurse says, hang your legs off the bed and rest them on this bench...Now, that request would be fine, if I weren't Portuguese and only 5'2" (5'3" on a particularly bad hair day), so she pulls up a chair and the intern goes to work...and misses the spot. DAMN!!!! I hear his supervisor mumbling to him "Yeah, that's not right. Do it again". Exsqueeze me?!?!? So, after a few more minutes, SUCCESS! Ah, sweet, sweet epidural.
The next 17 hours are a bit of a blur, but if this were a movie, this would be where the screen gets fuzzy, maybe has a little tilt, and there is a bad 60's song playing in the background indicating how stoned I actually was. Periodically, the doctors and nurses would come in, check my progress, and reassure me that I would have a baby by 4am, 6 am the latest. Somewhere around 6:30, Jackie came in and told me her shift was over and she would be leaving, but that she was going to make sure I got hooked up with a good nurse. "WAIT! What happened to a baby by 6?!?!?! You did mean today, didn't you?" And with that, Jackie was gone.
A few minutes later, my new nurese, Joanne came in. At first, I was a bit apprehensive because I so enjoyed Jackie, but Joanne soon proved that she was the best nurse for the job and she had me in stitches (I mean laughing, the other stitches come later) within minutes. A few more hours went by, my epidural being my constant companion and best friend, and soon it was lunch time. Oh wait, no luch for me. So what if it's been 19 hours since I've eaten and I puked up what I did eat. No problem. I'M ONLY PUSHING OUT A PERSON THROUGH AN AREA THAT USUALLY ONLY HANDLES LIQUIDS!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEONE GET ME A FREAKING CHEESEBURG
ER!!!! And by the way, for any males readers out there, it is a crock of crap that passing a kidney stone is equivalent to giving birth. Who came up with that analogy, anyway?!?! Some guy trying to minimize what the hell happened to his wife's va-jay-jay? Let me tell you something, HE'S LYING!! I think if a guy wants to know what it's like to give birth to something the size of a watermelon, perhaps he should pass a softball through his weiner and then we'll talk. Yeah...yeah...
Sorry, got a little carried away. Let me get back to where I was...lunch time. As I said, it had been about 19 hours in labor at that point and I wasn't really getting to where I needed to be to have this baby come out. My water had already been broken and I was maxed out on pitocin, so there wasn't much left to do to help Shank make an appearance. Finally, my doctor came in and started talking about an emergency c section if something didn't happen within the next hour. Now, in epidural land, that didn't sound so bad b/c I figured I wouldn't have to push this kid out of a very small opening, but, alas, Shanky had other ideas. No sooner had the doc left the room, when I started to have a very strange cramp in my left butt cheek. Having never had a baby before, I thought, "Maybe I should mention this b/c this is weird." "Uh, Joanne, I don't know if this is relevant or not, but my left butt cheek is cramping up something fierce."
"Really? Ok. Let me take a look." She takes a peek and says, "Yep. Time to push. Someone go get the doc."
"Time to push?!?!? You got that from a cramp in my ass?!?!" I couldn't believe that the pain in my ass was my kid getting ready to meet me.
Not 45 minutes later, Shank appeared and in grand style. Shank not only took a crap on the way out, but took a crap so big it created a slip and slide effect and shot poo way across the room. You know it's bad when even the medical staff goes, "Whoa". Now, the plan had been to hand me Shank right out of the shoot, but since there was enough poop to power a small factory, they rushed Shank over to a table to start working and cleaning. The crying started pretty soon after that, but still no one told me if I had a boy or a girl. Finally, Nicole, tears in her eyes and in full sob, said, "it's a girl!" Huh?!?!? Really? A girl? Are you sure? I don't want anyone to take that reaction the wrong way b/c I was ABSOLUTELY THRILLED BEYOND WORDS to have a daughter, but I had been absolutely CONVINCED that I was having a boy.
I was wrong. Instead, Nicole and I were blessed with an absolutely gorgeous, perfect little girl. She was born on February 4, 2010 at 1:06 pm. She weighed 7 lbs 12 oz and was 20" long. And did I mention that she is perfect.
Welcome back!
ReplyDelete