Happy Six Months Jake!

Little Mister is six months old today! I thought I would write down what I remember from the day of his birth since experience tells me you soon forget. All I know about the day I was born is that my belly button came untied in the nursery at some point!

Jake was due on Dec. 9th, but when I went in for my appointment that day, the midwife just looked at me, shook her head and said "he's not ready yet." She advised me to go home and sleep (yeah, right!) and drink lots of fluids. Well, after four days of drinking lots of water, I wasn't too surprised when I started peeing my pants. Just a trickle, here and there, nothing too big. I just considered it one more humiliation in what I felt was my body's way of turning against me. I talked to my best friend and my sister that night and told them about my developing need to wear Depends undergarments. We started to wonder if this could actually be my water breaking. So, the next morning I went to see the midwife again. That's when I got sent to the hospital.

I remember being hooked up to a monitor that showed you each contraction you were having. I laid in bed with Mike by my side all morning and into the afternoon watching these contractions show up on the monitor. I felt nothing! I thought, what have women been complaining about for so long? This is a breeze! Surely, I am a super woman. About every hour, my midwife would come in to check me and sadly deliver the same news. I wasn't dilating at all, this might take awhile. So what, I thought? I could do this for hours. Around 4pm she decided to give me some drugs to induce labor. That's when I felt my first real contractions. On the pain scale of 1 to 10 I labeled them about a four. We kept this up until around 7pm when the pain started registering higher, like a 7 or 8. At this time, Mike (who is wonderful) asked me if it would be okay to order a pizza and have it delivered to the room. I (who am also wonderful) said, "sure honey!" Unfortunately, by the time the pizza arrived the contractions had gone up to about a 9 on that pain scale. Now, I had great nurses who had been helping me through the pain up to that point. They were trying to get Mike involved by advising him to rub my back during contractions. They had me sitting on one of those big round exercise balls. A really bad contraction hit and when I looked at Mike to see if he was coming to help me what I saw was my husband sitting in a chair with his feet propped up stuffing pizza and banana peppers into his mouth! I may have come unglued. I remember asking him to come rub my back. (He says I yelled at him.) I don't think he had been paying attention to the nurses direction on how best to rub my back during contractions because he was doing it all wrong. So, I asked him to stop. (He says I yelled.)

By 10pm I had had enough and begged for an epidural already. They finally agreed and called in the doctor who does that. When she entered the room, I proudly told her that she was my new best friend. Mike had to leave the room during the epidural because he faints at the sight of needles. My parents showed up about that time, and I was feeling much better. I even wanted Mike to come back in the room. We waited and waited. We napped and waited some more. Around 6am the following morning they checked and said I was only dilated to 5cm would I consider a c-section? YES! My trusted nurses of the previous night got to go home and what took their place can only be described as little miss perky. Now, if you know me, you know I don't do perky. She came in the room fired up and just kept saying "LET'S GO HAVE A BABY!!" They wheeled us into the operating room around 7:15 to get things started. My new best friend was still with me to give me more drugs so I wouldn't feel anything. They draped a sheet up so we couldn't see the doctors, but we could hear them. Right before they took out the baby, we heard one of the nurses say "Oops!" Now, that is not something you want to hear when you're in surgery. I know this because the doctor told her that you should never say oops while you're operating on someone. Mike and my new best friend told me it was nothing to worry about. Finally, the baby was out and they held his little head up over the draped sheet so we could see him. I remember thinking he looked like a little puppet dancing overhead because all I really saw was his face! I imagined his head glued to a popscicle stick for some reason. Mike went with Jake and the nurse while they gave him his first bath. While the doctor was finishing up with me, one of the nurses (a different one this time) exclaimed "What's that?" Again, not something you want to hear when you're in surgery. I let it go this time, I was just so happy to finally have Jake here.