Friday, May 20, 2016

and then there were eight

I've sat down to write this post about a million times, but i'm always interrupted by a screaming baby, a six year old asking me how long to set the timer for microwave popcorn, or a husband who can't ever seem to find his keys. This is my life. Every. Single. Day.

Anyways, as you may have guessed by now, Seanie Mac (his nickname) is here!! He was born on March 30, 2016 shortly before 2 pm. He weighed a whopping 8 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long.  I wish I could say that life with a newborn is blissful, serene and all of that other silly asinine stuff you see on a baby shampoo commercial, where the post partum mom is smiling insanely and already back to a size 2, but this is real life.  He's actually quite fussy and demanding, wants to eat 24 hours a day, and prefers to be held all of the time (don't we all) and the only person wearing a size 2 around here is the baby. But he's super cute and we adore him, so it's okay.

I will spare you the details of my birth story, unless you really want to hear it. Really? You do? Well okay then.....

He was born in the passenger seat of my car, on the freeway while my husband was driving me to the hospital.....just kidding, that was a YouTube video I recently watched.  Amazing video if you haven't seen it. My birth story isn't nearly as exciting. I was actually induced on March 30th because i'm antibody sensitized with some rare antigens that can hurt the baby. Since this was baby number six and I was seriously the size of a hippopotamus, I thought there was no possible way I would go to full term. Peanut was induced at 35 weeks because of my antibodies and low fluid levels, so I just assumed Seanie would be here early as well.

He wasn't.

As 38 weeks approached, I pretty much would've done anything to get him out. I tried Evening Primrose Oil capsules without any luck, I ate fresh pineapple everyday, all day long until my mouth went numb, had sex with the husband even though I looked like a giant sea tortoise who flipped over on her back and got stuck, but Seanie just wasn't coming out. My OB assured me at my 38 week appointment that he would be inducing me at 39 weeks.  Let me just add in here that when you promise a hugely hormonal, miserable, pregnant woman that you are going to induce on a certain date, dammit you better follow through!! But of course he forgot to schedule it and I spent two days playing phone tag with the scheduling people. Finally after leaving a hysterical "If you don't call me back right this minute with an induction date, I will find you and kill you" they called me back. Okay, so I didn't actually say that last part as the last thing I needed was to give birth behind bars for threatening a physician, but I wasn't taking no for an answer.  Luckily for me my OB agreed that Seanie needed to come out sooner than later, and scheduled my induction for the next morning at 6:30 am. Crisis over, prison avoided.

My husband was less than thrilled as he had just been hit with a really bad cold and felt like death, but I tossed some Dollar Tree cold pills at him and told him to suck it up, because my poor vagina could not take one more second of an eight pound baby doing the Mexican Hat Dance on my cervix.  We arrived at the hospital and the pitocin was started. If you've never had this before, it causes horrible contractions that come very closely together. They are much more painful than natural contractions and you literally feel like you're dying a slow, painful, torturous death. I tried really hard to skip the epidural but after five hours of screaming and crying through contractions while my husband sat on a comfy recliner sipping his Starbucks, I motioned for him to call the epidural lady ASAP (if memory serves me correctly, I believe it included a hand gesture and an F word).

The epidural lady arrived and within minutes I was feeling relaxed and comfortable. Since I hadn't slept at all the night before, I decided this would be the perfect time to take a nap. My OB left and headed back to the hospital to see some patients, my husband walked downstairs to the cafeteria to eat lunch, and I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.....for about 10 minutes. Seriously. Ten freaking minutes. All of a sudden I felt like I needed to take a colossal dump and since this wasn't my first rodeo, I knew exactly what that meant, Seanie boy was about to come out. The nurse who must've had "she's going to blow at any second" radar walked into my room and said, "You're fully dilated aren't you?" and I shook my head and said, "Yep, I think so".  Of course I was so she told me to cross my legs (this would've been helpful advice say nine months ago) and to hold him in as she needed to call my doctor and tell him to get back to the hospital. A few minutes later my husband came back from lunch and things started to move very quickly. Once you see beds start breaking apart and stirrups folding up and full gowns and head gear going on (birth is messy), you know that shit is getting real and you also know there's no going back. If you've ever suffered from severe constipation and you've pushed out a bowel movement the size of a bowling ball, this is much much MUCH worse so this is about when the panic and fear kick in. It doesn't matter if it's your first, sixth or eighteenth, it's a scary thing to push a human out of your loins (forget the head....think shoulders...shudder).

As luck would have it, Seanie was in the posterior position which means he was coming face up. It's not impossible to deliver in this position (I actually pushed our third child out this same way) but it's not ideal. The doc could not get him to rotate so we decided to forge ahead and at this point all I wanted was the pain to end.  There are a lot of jokes aimed at women like myself who have large families with lots of kids that by the time the fifth or sixth kid comes out, they must just fall right out. Oh how I wish that were true.  I pushed and pushed (and pushed) and he did not want to come out. At this point everyone is yelling at me "push push push push push push" and I wanted to "smack smack smack smack smack" everyone, but I was not in the position to do it, so I took another deep breath and pushed.  Seanie Mac finally came out after several pushes and since I was still somewhat numb from the recently given epidural, I didn't even notice that my lady parts split wide open during the delivery and the doctor did some lovely needlepoint work on my vag.

I'll leave you now with some pics (no, not of my vag...the baby...geez!) I have so much more I want to say but i'll save it for later as i've already had to take a million breaks while writing this post to deal with baby boy and his brothers. At this rate, if I continue writing, i'll be posting this birth announcement when he's in college. 

Me and Seanie Mac shortly after his birth. 
He looks like he's contemplating whether or not he got a good deal doesn't he? 
 Coming home pic. 
Don't let this fool you. He isn't yawning here. 
Rather, he's putting most screamo musicians to shame. 
My son can out scream you all!
This isn't a good pic as far as quality goes (dark room, cell phone pic) 
but it still melts my heart. 
Sleeping newborn...my fave! 
 Photo shoot via daddy....this shoot did not go as expected at all.
We bought a fancy outfit for him to wear but he freaked out and went ape shit.
And forget about him falling asleep in one of those lumpy newborn poses
....nope not our kid!!!
So we did the best we could..he was actually screaming throughout this entire shoot
but my hubby is a pro so he managed to click some shots in between screams. I think he did an excellent job considering Seanie is not a cooperative client. He hates diaper changes, clothing changes, and just people messing with him in general. Definitely our child. No DNA test required.

 At 7 weeks he is smiling, laughing and cooing at us. 
I'll enjoy it while it lasts. I have teenagers.