Dispatches from the land of "Not What I Expected"

Last week, I thought that today I would be sending the kids to church with Rob so that me and Sammy could stay home and rest. I was looking forward to a nice day home with the family.

But that was not meant to be.

I have spent the day in my lovely hospital room with a tube in my nose draining the contents of my stomach and intestines. I'm hooked up to my best friend, the IV, which loads me up with sugar water, pain meds and anti-nausea meds.

For some reason, abdominal surgery just doesn't agree with my body. The day after surgery, my belly filled with air so that I still look 9 months pregnant (though Rob tries to assure me it's more like 5). I was still functioning fine, so they sent me home, and that night I started getting sick. I was sick all the next day, and finally called the doc. They told me to come back to the hospital, so here I am. They say I am a medical mystery. There doesn't seem to be a reason for all the air, and nothing seems to make it better or worse, it just stays the same. I also have an illius, which means my bowels are still trying to wake up, which is why they are now draining through my nose. Lovely image, I know. It is a bit unpleasant, to say the least.

So, again, dear friends, I ask if you would say a little prayer if you think about it--that I could get better and go home! Thanks for all your support, I have loved getting your comments. Hopefully I will be back to posting pictures and fun updates soon!

Pictures!

Sam! Isn't he handsome? It's doing that crazy rotating thing. Sorry. I've learned the only way to fix it is start over, and I'm too tired :)

So far the consensus is that Sam looks like his Daddy.

The most totally unflattering picture of both of us, but what can you do?

More to come later. Right now, I'm off to bed.

Bert's here!

And he does have a name! Well, we're 99% set on the name :) We've dubbed him Samuel Robert. Sammy for now.

Sorry, we forgot the camera cord, but I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow cuz that's all that matters, right! He is a cutie--red hair, big round cheeks, beautiful skin. He measures in at a whopping 9 lbs, 1 oz and 21 inches. He looks kind of like a 3-wk old :) He was born at 3:40 am Monday morning by emergency section.

And now, time for Too Much Information again! If you don't want the gory details, stop now and go to the "Horror Stories" post, and take about half of my worst expectations and add a little drama, and that's basically it. Which sounds bad, but surprisingly, wasn't actually that bad at the time.

I'll try to keep this brief, kudos to you if you make it through the whole story!

So, I woke up at 4 am Sunday having some contractions that didn't just feel like Braxton-Hicks. I thought, "Today's the day!" Throughout the day Sunday, I had contractions sporadically, some really intense, others, not really. They weren't happening all that often, mostly 10-20 minutes apart. Finally we decided to take the girls to stay with our wonderful friends for the night, hoping we'd end up at the hospital. Around 10:30, contractions got a little more regular and more intense. At 11:30, we went to the hospital even though I wasn't sure it was really time. By midnight, the triage nurse informed me I was dilated to a 7. This surprised everyone, because I wasn't in that much pain. They took me back to the delivery room, and the nurse convinced me that if I had made it to this point so easily, I did not need an epidural. She said I had reached the peak of the pain, and the pain of pushing is different and isn't really numbed by the epidural, and that I'd push a lot more efficiently without it. So I decided to see if I could do it. Go me.

The doc came and broke my water, which had mecomium, so that was some cause for concern. The nurse was like, "you kind of seem like you're having back labor." And she was right, my back did hurt. She was an awesome nurse, and she did the counter-pressure thing for me and really helped me through the contractions. I went on like that for a couple of hours, at one point the baby's heart rate dipped, but changing my position brought it back up. Then suddenly my uterus went berzerk. I started having off the chart contractions one on top of the other. Um, ouch. Baby's heart dipped again. Changed position, got a shot to relax the uterus, and it went back up. I asked for an epidural. The anesthesiologist took FOREVER to get to my room, and the contractions didn't relent the whole time. Ouch. Thought I was going to die. Finally got the epidural and started to feel I could relax, when baby's heart dipped yet again, and my own heartrate went sky-high. Next thing I knew, I was being whisked off to the operating room, on my hands and knees on the bed since that was the position that kept his heart rate up. When we got in there, his heart had dipped again, and words like "Stat" and "crash" were being thrown around which scared me a bit. By the time they let Rob in, they had already sliced down to my uterus--I thought he was going to miss the whole thing. But, out came the baby, and he went straight to the NICU team for evaluation to see if he had breathed in any meconium. Just as they were about to intubate him, he started to cry, thank goodness. Whew. End of drama.

The pediatrician kept a close eye on him for the morning, and he was fine. I got sewed up and drugged up, and I'm fine, too! Once the baby came out, the OB saw the size of his head and his general hugeness, and said she didn't think he would have made it out any other way than a c-section. So, even though things were a little scary, I actually felt very calm throughout, and I'm glad that I didn't have to push and push for hours before we figured out that he was just not going to make it out. AND, he had been completely face-up, so it was full-on back labor, and that would have made pushing harder.

I am so very grateful to have a healthy, beautiful baby boy! We are so blessed!

Pretty please

Okay, I'm begging for mercy here. Bert needs to come today or tomorrow, or Rob will be into his vacation days, and he'll probably just lose his paternity days. And days off are awfully hard to get around here, so we would like to maximize them. So if it crosses your mind, could you please say a little prayer that Bert will be born? Many thanks in advance :) For my part, I plan to go to the park and walk around and around until labor starts or I collapse. Then if that doesn't work, I'll go buy a knitting needle and break my own water!

The state of Bert

In case anyone is wondering, Bert is still cozied up in the womb. I actually got a good night's sleep last night and feel better today than I have in a while, so I don't think he's on his way out anytime soon. I have come to grips with him sticking around in there, I'm not as desperate as I was to get him out. We'll see what happens.

World's Worst Gardener

This summer I didn't try to go all out on a garden. I just wanted a few tomatoes, and for the first time ever I planted zucchini. I was traumatized by all the zucchini I had to eat as a child, and have never wanted any of my own, but this summer it just sounded good. Must be the weird hormones. Plus, I thought it would give me an ego boost to have a plant overflowing with vegetables. But apparently, I cannot grow even zucchini. I get tons of big, beautiful flowers that shrivel up and fall off before they turn into anything.

Finally, I found this buried in the leaves:

Rob says I should have titled this post "When Urologists grow zucchini". Ha ha.

So far, I made a loaf of zucchini bread, which used about 1/8th of this monster. And we ate the whole thing in one day. And Grace calls it "bikini bread." So I guess I'll try to make a couple more loaves, and then I think my hankering for zucchini will be about done. So I guess it's alright that I'm the world's worst gardener :)

An unsolicited plug

I just had the carpets cleaned, and the guys who did it were great. Polite, helpful, quick--they rounded DOWN when they charged me, and spot-cleaned the whole back of the couch which was recently "decorated" with red crayon by someone in our house (no names, here) for free. They listened to Grace tell them all about her baby brudder and her new curtains. So if you're thinking of getting your carpet done, I will give you their name!

Memo to Bert

Dear Bert,
I know I've been sending you "stay in there" vibes for the last 9 months. But I've had a change of heart. Please come out now. You are enormous, and therefore, so am I. You "dropped", which was nice, but now you have filled up all that extra space and your feet are clear above my ribcage. If you stay in there much longer, you will be kicking me in the chin.

I don't know if this is completely your fault, but my kankles have progressed to full-on walrus feet, and I can't even wear my flip-flops anymore. Well, I do wear them because I can't go barefoot to the store, but when I take them off, there are big flip-flop shaped dents in my feet. What with the walrus feet and the attractive waddling, I hope I don't get put in the zoo. Also my hands are so swollen I can't straighten my fingers and they are all numb.

I know my hormones won't be back to normal for a while, but I think hormones plus discomfort plus fear have turned me into an unpredictable volcano. Your sister Grace will especially like having her mother back. That poor girl bears the brunt of Mount Mama's explosions. Plus she is really excited to meet you. If you come out soon, I will promise not to let her name you (how's that for motivation?). Otherwise, you might be named George, Scooby Doo, Gigham, or some other string of sounds that I can't reproduce. Lucky for you she has given up on the name Ian.

So, please Bert, make your grand entrance (or is that an exit?) and make it soon!

Love,
Mount Mama