Alright, so life with a newborn is, well, a whole thing.  It has taken me a while to have a hot second to write part II of this post. And, truth be told, I am hoping Little Liam decides to not make any weird noises while I am writing this so I can get through it!

So, where did we leave off…clear liquid diet.  So after hours of taking meds, not being able to eat or get up, and no food.  They finally let me have chicken broth, jello and gingerale. It tasted like the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.

I got admitted into the hospital around 7:30am on Sunday, it was now Tuesday around 12:30pm.  24 hours of cytotek every two hours, no dilation.  I was going a little stir crazy.  Everyone there was super helpful and nice except this one POS Doctor.  We’ll call him Dr. Shhmerens.  He decides its a good idea to come into the room and say “Betcha wish you knew before now it was a bad idea to drive down here for your shower, huh?” amongst other annoying comments including telling me I might be sitting here for several more DAYS.

BRO.  Definitely joking with a lady having her baby 6 weeks early in a hospital she’s never been to 4 hours away from home see.  You should certainly joke about how she shouldn’t have come.  That ought to elicit a great response. After he made me sob, the nurse felt bad, went to tell him, he comes back in to “apologize” aka patronize me for another 10 minutes. “Some patients like to lighten the mood with humor, I can see you’re not one of them.  I don’t want to set unrealisic expectations, so how about we just don’t tell you any timeframes at all from now on.” Then he starts talking about intelligence and some people have some kind of intelligence and others have “medical intelligence”.  AKA you’re stupid and didn’t understand what the doctors told you which is why you’re upset now. A-HOLE.

Luckily his shift was almost over so I didn’t have to deal with him again.  But, I was able to write a nice little note in my hospital evaluation form explaining my lack of satisfaction with his bedide manner. 🙂

When my doses of oral cytotek were complete, they decided to use the suppository version aka they put the medicine directly on your cervix…PLEASANT. Now I would have this joy every two hours until something, hopefully, happened.

My mom and brother drove down thinking we would have our little bundle by now, but instead they are in my room playing rummy and watching me sip broth whilst hiding eating delicious treats. About 3:30 the contractions finally started happening.  I had felt tiny glimpses while on the other meds, but now things felt like they were kicking into gear.  I got nervous and excited.  Over the next few hours they got more intense and quicker…Yay this means stuff, right?

NOPE.  They kept checking me and still NOTHING.  How do you break a window to get out of a place and then hide in a corner for days not leaving.  What the heck.  So, now I am in a ton of pain, but not dilated and just miserable. And, I’ve had two episodes where I’ve had a big contraction and every medical professional on the floor come running in.  Baby’s heart rate dropped on the monitor and it’s panic mode.  They lie me down, put me on oxygen, move me to my side and hope they get things going again.  Luckily they did and they were somewhat false alarms.  But they left me feeling TOTALLY CALM and Chill.  WAIT.

I started thinking I might need a C section.  I just felt like with no movement, two days of drugs plus these episodes, can’t be good.  I was ok with that, I had no “birth plan” because…as we found out…you can’t really plan for something outside of your control. But, if we could avoid surgery that would be ideal.

After about 3-4 hours of intense pain, my mom and brother left, I told them obviously nothing was happening until tomorrow so they should at least get some rest. Meanwhile, I think I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, so people tell me anyway.  But, this ish was crazy.  In my head, before all this craziness, I would get an epidural if I needed one. And, let me tell you, I needed it. I was asking the doctors, but they didn’t want to give it to me too early and around 7 I still wasn’t dilated so they said no dice.  I was trying to tough it out, listening to meditations, whatever I could, but it got to a point where I asked for the doctor and said I needed it.  If this wasn’t happening until tomorrow, I at least needed to sleep.

They finally okayed it and the Mr. Magic Sandman arrived shortly thereafter.  Since you can’t get up, they give you a catheter (YIKES).  But I finally felt some relief and decided to try and get some rest.

A couple hours later, I woke up and asked Kenny for some ice chips.  But something felt funky.  The epidural was feeling like it was wearing off and I felt a ton of pressure, it was the weirdest sensation.  It was around midnight, and we called the nurse in to check.  All of a sudden shit got real.  I told the nurse I felt like I had to pee which made no sense since–the catheter.  And then I was like I need to push and she was like “NOOOOOOOOOOOO.  Don’t do that. I’ll call the doctor.”

The doctor came in, checks me out and says “8cm and 90% effaced. Wow that went fast. Call in the team”. Meanwhile I was like I legit have to push.  All the doctors in the world came in, counting tools, changing the bed around, it was all a blur.  The nurse said ok let’s do a “practice push”. Inhale and when you get a contraction bear down. Well I did and well, it was not practice.  Three contractions later this little bugger came flying out. They said “It’s a boy!” and I was like wait what happened. That was fast.

The whole thing was just wait, rush, wait, rush, wait, rush.  But there he was. 3 contractions and about 8 pushes he was (finally) here.  What an insane experience, the whole damn thing. Since he was a preemie, they let me give him a little smooch and then swept him off to NICU to be checked out.

The doctors checked me out (and gave me a few stitches even though he was tiny-ugh!) and then quickly wheeled me to recovery.  Where they got to press incredibly hard down on my uterus (FUN) but they also gave me honey nut cheerios which was the first thing I got to chew in days, so I’d say we were even.

Kenny got to go to NICU and see the little guy.  We had already decided on names, years ago, so we knew it would be Liam.  But we had decided to make one small change, John as the middle name, in honor of his Papa, The Big Cat. So, after all this, we have our little guy: Liam John Lubin aka LJ aka LL aka Li’l Cat.

The next chapter will be about adventures in the NICU including this fun task called Manual Expression, learning what the heck biliruben is, and how to change a tiny diaper through incubator holes!