Birth Story Part 1

Greetings, Earthlings.

I start my penance and beg forgiveness for my absence. My 'are you out of your ever loving mind' goals for the day are to get a quarter of the way through this post, and to make shrimp. This will be my Everest. If I have that whole Pinterest Mom 'why, in the last two hours I've taught her French and also baked a cake in the shape of Mt. Rushmore to celebrate President's Day' gene it has sadly gone untapped. As it is she is in her crib, I am two feet away in a glider, and she is looking at me as though I am mid-Matterhorn at Disneyland and have left her in the pediatric waiting room awaiting shots.

I thought I would start by getting her birth story out because that's the biggest to-do that has occurred in my absence, I was obsessed with reading them when I was pregnant/starting IVF, and if I don't get it down soon I may as well dictate it to her so she can use it for a college essay.

So let's rewind 7 1/2 months, shall we?

(Me and Heisenbaby - our last few days in the hospital)

Heisenberg was due August 13th - but pretty much for the entire month of July, I was in this continuous, seductive dance with pre-eclampsia. I'd have an appointment, my blood pressure would be crazy, I'd go for monitoring, they'd do the 24 hour testing of my urine (ever peed in a jug? GOOD TIMES) and I'd get sent home.  My hands and feet were huge, as was my nose of all things (check out Ms. Piggy face) and I felt like ass, but it would just be borderline ass. My ObGyn kept saying things like 'if we make it to the end of the week, I'm going to be thrilled'. I kept my legs crossed.

July 22nd was our 8 year wedding anniversary. I was a grumpy sack of delicate bitchiness but I kept saying 'all I want for our anniversary is to not be in the house, and cuddle in strange white sheets'. So the plan was for my Mom to come up and stay with the doggies, let in contractors (because oh yeah, I decided now was the time to have our bathrooms and our bedroom redone) and Bubba and I would go stay at a hotel down the street. Juuuuust had to go to ObGyn in the morning and then we'd meet after Bub got home from work.

I took what I didn't know was my last belly shot (I was taking pics of our crappy guest bathroom which looked like a 1970s clown nightmare before they demolished it, so I accidentally snagged one of myself in the mirror) and off we went. My BP was 160 over 100 something, STILL, so the Doc said nope, go across the street where you will happily reside until she pops out. Above pictures are me upon arriving at the hospital, thrilled.

So I DID get to spend our 8 year wedding anniversary cuddling in strange white sheets... next time I will be more specific with my anniversary wishes.

Now at this point, I had already spent a few days total in the hospital spread apart, so I was familiar and my hospital game was on point. I was put in the exact same room they always put me in (right next to the surgical doors for added pressure) and I begged my thankfully nice nurses to please for the love of gawd and all that was holy try to keep the bed next to me free because I did not like company. (The 100 other times I was monitored there, I had had some husband who didn't understand the boundary of a curtain, and some women with scarily immobile babies who probably did not enjoy hearing people come in to tell me mine was the most active they've ever seen.)

And she was. Highly active. Girlfriend was awake more than she was asleep and she spent the better part of that last week with her foot wedged in my ribcage to the point where you could see my left side popping out. Nothing gave her more joy than for me to lay on my side while Bub was watching Netflix on his Ipad so she could kick the ever loving crap out of him. Nothing has changed.

ANYHOO.

I was checked in on Tuesday (our anniversary dinner was bags of doritos and pepsi) and from Tuesday to Thursday I just kept my legs crossed and was forbidden to get out of bed except to pee (into a jug, of course) and to take 5 minute showers. My nose started to look more piggy and my BP was all over the place.

I watched a crap ton of Family Feud, deduced that Steve Harvey and Adam Levine have the same show biz mantra of 'SAY YES TO EVERYTHING', watched marathons of "who do you think you are?" on TLC (and wondered when they're going to have an adopted person or someone with some shitty lineage for the love of gawd I can't be the only one) and genuinely wondered how I ever survived most of my life without the ability to pause a program. I also ate everything - chicken, pasta, vegetables - under what was described as 'red pepper sauce' but was really not-that-bad but highly-suspicious-looking congealed orange gunge. #whitegirlproblems

Somewhere around Wednesday I was still convinced I'd be able to go home and hold her in - because I was not dilated. AT ALL. Nobody could even reach my cervix to try to figure it out - but oh was it fun being a part of the hunt! Then my Doc came in and said that no, this time for sure I was there to stay.  I distinctly remember my Mom and Bub being in the room after he gave this speech and my sheer panic that our house was literally being destroyed and rebuilt and we didn't even have the friggin bassinet put together (or a room to put it in). They said it would be fine (and at the time they had to at least half think they were lying) and ran around like tornadoes. The next time I would see daylight outside of the hospital would be 20 lbs lighter and with a broken vajay.

At some point on Wednesday, Bub and I colored in coloring books he and my Mom had picked me up so I had something to do. He colored a polar bear that was going to dive into water and that turned into my bizarre focal point during the beginning stages of labor - I still have it on my nightstand and need to have it framed and stuck in her nursery (I highly suggest this as a focal point because you can use it in their nursery after).

By Thursday, on my millionth hour of Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune (which became my favorite because that meant ambien was coming soon) my hands started to swell. So did my feet. Mind you, they do this sometimes in the summer anyway because they're fickle beasts but it seemed stranger. My Doc happened to come in at 9 PM to do a C-section, and my nurse flagged him down just to come have a look see. He looked genuinely perplexed (he has pointed out to me that I was quite perplexing as my pee continued to remain clean) and said 'well, let's try to induce you because you have nothing to do anyways' and I was 1 day past the 37 week mark. Let's do this shit.

So I texted Bub that they were going to put in some Cervadil, so ummm... get your shit together she's coming. The plan was for them to put it in, and hope that my cervix looked a little friendlier by morning so they could give me some Pitocin and get this show on the road.

So they inserted something that felt like a tampon but had goo on the end of it to 'ripen' my cervix (ripen is absolutely disgusting in this context, I agree). I played a word game (which I'm still obsessed with) on my phone, I tried the Kardashian game (oh for shame), another fashion game and wheel of fortune on my phone until I conked out.

At 5 AM I woke up excited, like a kid going to Disneyland for the first time. And I felt... different.

On that note - Hooray! I got this blog post done in one day... to be continued. :)