Happy Birthday Meatball!

Our baby turns two today. I can hardly believe it. I was putting him to bed last night, his last night of being one, and I started to cry. I actually don't really know why - his baby stage has not really been all that kind to us. I welcome more independence, consistent sleeping (it's gotten much better, by the way!), being able to communicate his needs, and watching his little personality develop. Nevertheless, he's our youngest and our last, so it made me kind of nostalgic.

I don't scrapbook or journal, and there are no baby books to speak of, only hundreds of photos and this silly blog. But there's a site that will turn your blog into a book, so voila...at least it will have the stories of my children's births,...a few muffin recipes and some fair freaks.

August 22, 2006

I don't do pregnancy very well. I was extremely sick with both kids and very uncomfortable throughout most of my pregnancy with Meatball. I was counting the days until he was born practically from the day I found out I was pregnant.

From early on, I was concerned about how big this baby could possibly be since Banany weighed 9 lbs at birth. In fact, I mentioned it to my doctor at my very first prenatal appointment. Once we found out we were having a boy this time, and subsequent babies are often larger, I started getting even more worried.

At 38 weeks, I had an ultrasound to give a fetal weight estimate and he was estimated to be 9 lbs 6 oz at that time. However, the margin of error on those ultrasounds is 20%, so my doctor felt like he was still a reasonable size to deliver, considering I did not have problems with Banany, and she also thought I'd go early since I was already dilated.

Skip ahead to 2 long weeks later, I'm now 40 weeks pregnant, dilated to 4 cm and still haven't had him. They schedule me for an induction on my due date (Aug 22). Since, at this point, it's still an "elective" induction, we had to call in the morning to see if they could get us in (depending on how many "walk-ins" there were the night before). They couldn't get us in initially, but called back a few hours later and told us to come. It was agonizing waiting for the phone to ring. By this point, I was incredibly uncomfortable and getting increasingly anxious about how big he'd be.

We get to the hospital and my doctor, who was on vacation the week before, is quite surprised that I hadn't had him yet. She wants another fetal weight check and this time it comes back that he is now estimated at 10lbs 6 oz. She tells us that the weight is right on the border for doing a c-section and it's up to us if I want to try a "v" birth or do a c-section instead. She then had to leave to do another c-section and we could take some time to decide.

It was horrible trying to decide what to do. Do we do try a "v" - hoping everything goes smoothly and, in theory, have a faster recovery? Or, do we go right to a c-section, which could be safer for the baby (since he could get stuck in a "v" delivery) but likely a longer recovery?

The nurses and even my doctor seemed to be leaning towards a "v", but said the decision was ours. We were really stressed about it and prayed we'd make the right decision. We decided we'd try a "v" birth.

Fast forward about 8 hours since we arrived at the hospital. My doctor's other patient had problems during the c-section and we had to wait for her. By 7 or so that night, J and I are kind of a mess. We're stressed, anxious, tired, etc. My doctor comes back and seems to now be leaning towards a c-section because Meatball's abdomen looked a little big in the ultrasound, indicating he may have large shoulders. I pretty much fall apart at this point because we'd taken hours to reach the conclusion that we'd try a "v". But, J and I both started to have a change of mind also and agree to do a c-section.

My c-section gets scheduled for 9:30 that night. At about 8, I go into labor on my own. I have hard contractions, since I was already at least a 4, (with no meds since I'm about to go to the OR) while I'm waiting. Of course, surgery gets delayed and we don't get started until 9:45. That wasn't as fun as it sounds.

I'm absolutely petrified of the surgery - I've never been operated on before, so it was all pretty scary to me and I just wanted the baby to be ok. The c-section goes very smoothly and he was born at 10:16pm, tipping the scales at 10 pounds 8 oz and 22 1/2 inches long. J goes upstairs with him and the nurses to take care of all the newborn stuff that they do and the doctor continues to work on me to finish up the operation.

At some point, the doctor discovers an enormous cyst on my right ovary (we found out later it weighed a pound - it was about the size of a cantaloupe!) and removes that. Then, because the baby was so big, my uterus was also very big and is not contracting and I started losing lots of blood - in the end, about three liters. After about three hours or so, they were able to get things under control. Thankfully, they were able to stop short of doing a hysterectomy and a blood transfusion.

Meanwhile, J is upstairs and has no idea what's taking me so long. He gets a few sketchy reports about some complications, then a cyst, then "it's not cancer," then some heavy bleeding. After a couple of hours, he's pretty emotional and worried. Fortunately, my sister and my dad were there with him (my mom was at our house with Banany). Finally, at about 3:15am, they bring me up to the room. I was completely out of it because of the anesthesia. I'm still hooked up to tons of stuff at that point because we were told I may still need the blood transfusion. Nurses check my vitals about every 10-15 minutes all night long, but everything remained stable.

Funny...one of the things I remember vividly was the night nurse who came into my room shortly after I was brought up. She had on bright, bright red lipstick and looked about 18. She was trying to go over the stuff in my hospital folder with me - asking me if I wanted the hospital photographer to come the next day, etc. I'm not sure I could even form an intelligible sentence. But I remember thinking it was funny that I'd just gone through all that and Miss Red Lips found it necessary to discuss hospital photographs at 3am. Timing is everything.

So, skip ahead a few days...recovery initially was pretty darn painful. The doctor really worked my uterus (they massaged it for a couple of hours trying to get it to shrink and really moved things around), which left me extremely sore. But after a few days (and some good drugs), I started to feel quite a bit better and my recovery was remarkably fast. After it was all said and done, it really was a blessing in disguise that I had the c-section since I would have surely had major complications during a "v" delivery because of the cyst.

And hence the story of our little Meatball. He was a round, pudgy, thick, perfectly healthy baby...and worth every second of discomfort I had during pregnancy and the delivery.

I love you my Meatball!

A few non-chronological pictures (thanks to Blogger problems!)

Our first picture as a family of four. Banany was as happy about it as she looks.

Our little man back then.

Our big boy.

A rare picture of the pregnant Vivi (3 weeks before he was born).

J all dressed up for our c-section party.

J holding his sweet boy.

The nurses actually laughed when then saw how big he was. Yeah, super funny.

Leaving the hospital.