If you don't want to know the answer...

Here's a conversation B and I had last night:

B: "So, uh, how are things going? You know...down in the southern regions."

Me: [Insert internet-inappropriate discussion of pain levels and stitches here.]

B: [Getting a look of abject horror on his face while I'm talking.] Uh [blanches], I, well, you know the doctor said something about bleeding and doing too much...um..."

Me: [As what he was really asking dawns on me.] "Oh! It's been fine." [Slight pause.] So you're worried that I'm doing too much and pushing myself too hard, huh?"

B: [Very clearly relieved that there will be no more talk of stitches.] "Yeah. That was all."

I think B learned a very important lesson yesterday: if you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.

Hey, guess what! I had a baby!

I'm sure you've noticed that it's been awhile since I last posted. As predicted in my last post, I did, indeed, make it to my 38 week appointment. I did not, however, make it even 24 hours past that before I was induced. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Last Thursday, I had my appointment. Things looked good, and I was at 2 cm, 50% effaced, and high. I was still predicting that I would go overdue.

Later that night, I was laying on the couch, and felt a couple of, um, little gushes. When I checked things out, there was a lot more fluid than should have been there, and I was about 110% sure I hadn't peed myself. I was having really mild contractions every six minutes or so, but no more leakage. So, I went to bed.

Friday morning, I had another gushing incident on the way to work, so I called my mom to find out how to tell if my water had broken. She told me it sounded like it had, and I needed to call the doctor. The doc's office wasn't open yet, so I continued on to work, where I had some stuff I needed to finish up before I went on leave.

At 9:00, my mom called to find out what the doc said, and I got yelled at for not having called yet. (In my defense, I had a whole set of jury interrogatories for a trial scheduled to start tomorrow - and that settled at the very end of the day today. A-holes - that wasn't done. And I had to organize my files and make sure everyone else would have my stuff covered while I was gone).

When my work stuff was finished, I called and talked to a nurse, who told me it sounded like my water had broken, and I needed to go to the hospital to get checked. I got to the hospital around 11:00, and it was pretty quickly determined that my water hadn't broken. And I still have no idea where the gushy fluids came from, but I still firmly maintain that it wasn't from my bladder.

However.

My blood pressure, which had been fine this entire pregnancy, and was 124/64 at my Thursday appointment, had skyrocketed to 152/95. After running some labs, which were fine, my OB gave me the option of staying at the hospital and starting an induction, or going home and coming in to the office today to get the BP checked. B and I chatted by phone (I told him to stay at work until I told him he needed to leave...no need to waste his time off sitting in the hospital when I'm not even in labor), and we decided to stay and get me induced. Having the baby on a weekend would allow B some more time to spend with all of us without having to take extra time off. And everyone involved knew that my BP wasn't going to go down over the weekend, and I just would have been sent over to the hospital to be induced after my BP check.

* * *Warning: the gory stuff involving lady bits lies ahead* * *

So I was given cytotec (same stuff used to induce me with W) at 4:00. I was contracting some, but nothing too strong. I ended up getting all four doses of cytotec before anything really happened. I woke up from my ambien-induced coma around 3:00 or 3:30 Saturday morning and was having some nasty contractions, but was still only at about 2-3 cm. I decided it was time for the epidural. My nurse told me I would have to have some sort of cervical change before they would let me get an epi. I think she took pity on me and lied to say I was at 3-4 cm, and I got my epi. It was heavenly, of course.

My OB was called in for someone else, so she stopped in to see me around 5:00. I was still holding steady at 3-4. She broke my water at 5:30 or 6:00, and the party really got started. I went from 3 to 8 in half an hour. Before we knew that I'd been moving that quickly, the doc was starting to get concerned about the baby. She came in all ready to do an amnio infusion and give me a crapload of pitocin to try to get him out. His heart rate was decelerating a lot during the contractions, and I guess she was worried about cord compression and was considering an emergency c-section. Thankfully, when she saw how fast I was progressing, baby's distress made some sense, and she let me go.

About 15 minutes after that, I was ready to go. I pushed for 20 minutes, and baby R came into the world.

Now, while that all sounds lovely, I have to interject my subjective view of the last hour or so of labor here. It sucked. A LOT. Progressing that quickly is pretty tough on the body. I was shaking, on the verge of barfing, and just generally wanting to die. The epi worked wonderfully on the contractions, but did NOT work at all on dulling the *ahem* "pressure" in the pelvic area. It's like the epi went everywhere on my lower body except my pelvis. And it hurt. At one point, I think I was involuntarily pushing just to try to get the hurting to stop. The nurse had gone to get me a dose of zofran, and before she came back, I called down and told the nurse that I really needed to push. When everyone got to my room, my doc said she had been watching my contractions on the monitor and actually thought I had been throwing up the whole time they were gone. Apparently pushing and puking look the same on the monitor. Who knew.

The doc also laughed at me as I was desperately hitting my epi booster button right before pushing time. I think her exact words were, "You know that's not going to do shit for you, right?" And I knew. But I was trying anyway.

When the doc assumed the position, she realized that this baby wasn't going to take much pushing to get out, and was quickly trying to round up enough nurses to handle everything. Like I said, I pushed for 20 minutes, and then had a beautiful baby boy.

* * *End section involving lady bits.* * *

At 7:20 AM on Saturday, April 24, Baby R joined our family. He weighed in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces, and measured 20.5 inches long. B and I were both surprised that he weighed more than W did when he was born. I had figured all along that this one was going to be smaller. I got the shorter part right, but not the lighter part.

He's been a great baby so far. He tends to sleep for three or so hours between feedings, and has been eating like a champ. The only real problem has been that he has a "tight suck," which amounts to him chomping more than sucking. So The Crusher has been doing a number on my nips, but not nearly to the extent that his brother did. I'm pleasantly surprised at how well nursing is going so far. My milk hasn't come in all the way yet, but it's starting to. I hope this keeps up.

Now, for the pictures (which is all you really wanted anyway, right?):

Baby R, shortly after joining us. It's crazy how much he looks like his brother.

The grandmas brought W up to visit later on Saturday morning. He was surprisingly good with R. This picture is of W leaning over to give R a hug as soon as he climbed up on my lap. Cutest. Thing. EVER.

The happy family, ready to go home this morning. Notice the look of horror on R's face. He already knows enough to be scared of having us as parents. Smart kid.

In the car seat and ready to head home.

And the sky is blue, too

I know it will shock everyone to hear this, but I have done absolutely NOTHING to prepare for the arrival of the new baby (which will be happening in t-minus 17-ish days and counting. Eek). I have no desire to do any of it, but know that it must be done, and almost had a panic attack the other night about everything. There are clothes to wash, a car seat to install, a nursery to prepare, a hospital bag to pack, a name to pick...the list goes on and on.

I have no time to get this stuff done, either. When I'm not at work or dealing with W (without B, usually), I'm sleeping. I am freaking exhausted. Most nights, I'm in bed within 15 or so minutes of getting W to bed. Tonight, B got home from class early (yay!), and he let me go to bed at 7:00 while he took over baby duties. After a 2.5 hour nap, I got up to do some of the life stuff I've been putting off in favor of sleep. Nothing baby-related, of course, or anything that even resembled house cleaning, but I did get a few things done. And I'm hoping to get tired soon so I can go back to bed.

In weekly appointment news, I guess I've technically made some progress, but not really. I went from (assumed) closed and really, really high to 1 cm, thick, and high. In the doc's words, my "stomach is shrinking appropriately, but I don't know where he's going!" I'm conflicted right now because I am so ready to be done with this pregnancy - I hate being pregnant so much. But, at the same time, I need more time to get shit done. I figure I've got at least another week. I'll totally make it to my next appointment. The real trick is going to be keeping myself awake after W goes to bed and forcing myself to do things that don't involve sitting on the couch and watching TV. Either that, or I need to drug the boys so they'll sleep through the late night baby prep sessions I'm going to have to do when I wake up after sleeping for just a couple hours.

You see how well that's working out for me tonight.

A compliment from B

Today was painting day. B and my mom did all the painting. I did a kick-ass job of supervising. When they got done painting the nursery, B looked at me and said, "I think this room is going to look good with all that bumble bee crap you want to do." (I'm doing a bee "theme" of sorts for the nursery).

I got all warm and fuzzy when the love of my life told me that he thinks the decorating crap I'm trying to pull out of my ass just might work.

All kinds of awesome

I've mentioned Michelle and her blog before. I'm lucky enough to be friends with her in real life, and not just on the internet. In fact, she lives like two blocks from me and is mostly responsible for convincing B and I to buy a house in this area - just one of the many reasons why she rocks - but I digress...

Michelle's birthday is next week, and rather than asking for presents for herself, she's planning to give and give and give to others. Check out her birthday celebration plans. Awesome.

I haven't quite figured out how I plan to contribute to Michelle's birthday awesomeness yet. I'm sewing some more bunting for the post-kindness party, and donating a few items to Aurora House, but that's not enough. I'm going to brainstorm some better acts of kindness to do next weekend. I'm guessing they'll be for some of the people closest to me...I owe them some extra kindnesses lately. If you have any ideas for me, I'd love to hear them.

I'll report back after M's birthday to let you know how her awesome idea plays out. Until then, stop over to her blog and say hi. You'll get to see just how awesome she is, too.

Lack of progress

I had my 36 week appointment yesterday. After digging around for awhile - quite painfully, might I add - the OB gave up on trying to reach my cervix. Yeah, it's still that high. Which made the doc assume that it's also still closed. So I haven't made any progress as far as birthing this baby goes. I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess. I got the same results at my 36 week appointment with W. But since I'm having real contractions this time around, I thought I might be a wee bit closer to no longer being pregnant at this point.

Unfortunately, I'm also noticing a lack of progress in my readiness for this baby. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than ready to be done being pregnant. I hate pregnancy with a passion - more than I've ever hated anything in the whole world, ever. But as much as I'm ready to have this leech out of me, I am NOT ready to deal with a newborn. No matter what I do, or how many counseling sessions I attend, I can't get myself past the idea that I don't want to do this again. I don't want another baby. I don't want to deal with all the shit (figurative and literal) that comes along with a newborn. I don't want to quit sleeping for the next six to nine months. I just...don't...

I hate that I can't make myself excited for this baby, not even a little bit. I just want this whole thing to be a bad dream that I wake up from soon. I'm trying to keep my mind open to whatever fucked up lesson this is all supposed to be teaching me, but I'm not seeing anything. Unless the lesson is that someone or something out there really hates me. I've learned that very clearly.

Ugh. I freaking hate this. I just want me back. Did you know it takes a year for your hormones to get back to normal after you have a baby? A whole year! And I don't know if that year starts running at birth or at weaning. Either way, it's far too long. I don't want to wait another year to start feeling like my old self again (not that I really remember what that feels like...if this theory is true, I haven't been "me" since the end of January 2008).

I think I need to force B to sit down and read my blog. Maybe then he'll give up on the idea of a third kid (I will fucking shoot myself in the head before I let that happen!) and believe me when I tell him that a vasectomy is an awesome idea.

Name! That! Baby!

We're going to play a little game here at I'm not THAT pregnant. It's called "Name That Baby." The objective is for you to come up with a name for our unborn son, as B and I seem to be incapable of doing so ourselves.

Some guidelines:

1. We prefer more traditional names.
2. Nothing too trendy or too common, but also nothing too weird and out-there.
3. Our last name starts with S, has two syllables, and rhymes with "blow."
4. Middle name will (most likely) be David.

To sweeten the pot, if you provide the name that we ultimately choose, I'll send you a Swistle-like care package (contents to be determined whenever I get around to buying the stuff for the care package).

Since we're starting to run out of time, I'm going to make the deadline for submissions midnight Eastern time on Monday, April 12. Options will be mulled over, and (hopefully) a decision will be made sometime after that.

Now, get to work and...Name! That! Baby!

Time for a change

A hair change, that is.

I've been thinking about a major haircut for a couple of weeks, but when the lovely Michelle did this with her hair, I was convinced that it's time.

I'm so freaking sick of my hair. I've had pretty much exactly the same hair cut - in varying lengths - for probably 13 or 14 years now. And I'm sick of it. But it seems like no matter what I do, it ends up looking exactly the same. Here's a picture from this weekend that gives you an idea of what it currently looks like (and also serves as the only belly picture from this pregnancy (35w 5d, if you must know)).

Excuse the stupid look on my face. I'm not the most photogenic person in the world.

So, any suggestions? I have no idea what to do. I need someone else to tell me what would look good on me because I lack the girl gene that gives most females the ability to do hair, make-up, nails, etc. For example, I'm 27-years-old, and I still can't quite properly put my hair in a ponytail. True story.

If anyone can give me ideas, I would appreciate them!

Easter pics

I haven't given you a post of gratuitous W pictures in a while, so here are some from Easter weekend.

W hunting eggs in Grandma's yard.

Taking a break from scavenging for eggs to sweep Grandma's porch.

Driving takes a lot of concentration.

Exploring the goodies the Easter Bunny left. W loves those plastic eggs.

Maybe I should twitter

I don't twitter. I think the whole concept it pretty damn stupid. Who the hell cares about the random things I'm thinking/doing throughout the day?

But, then again, there are multiple times a day that I have random thoughts I'd like to turn into blog posts, but they're either too short and stupid to bother with, or they're gone by the time I'm able to blog.

Twitter would alleviate that problem. I could publish my inane thoughts to the world the minute they popped into my brain. Plus, all the for-profit bloggers who do contests make you tweet stuff for extra entries. As one of the unluckiest people in the world, I could use all the extra entries I can get.

In the end, "twitter = stupid" is currently a more convincing equation than "twitter = convenient way to spout my randomness." So, for now, I figure I'll spare you all the minute-by-minute updates of my boring life and stupid thoughts.

You're welcome.