Here it is....in it's unedited form....I didn't have time to re-read it, but wanted to get it up so I could work on my other posts.
Life is full of exciting moments- birthdays, Christmas, graduation, getting your first job. And all of these pale in comparison to the day that your child is born.
Heather and I had gone through a couple rounds of trying to get pregnant with no luck. In my head, this was taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R., but apparently only having to wait 3 months is not that long at all. I am always so impatient for, well, pretty much everything and was constantly hounding Heather to take a pregnancy test on day three even though I knew we had to wait until about day 13. Our third time around, however, I felt like it just wasn’t going to happen. I think it was around day 10 when Heather took her first test for this round and I wasn’t getting my hopes up. We waited several minutes for a line to appear….and nothing. I happened to be in the middle of vacuuming and decided to finish up. As soon as I started back up, Heather yelled to me that she saw a line.
I figured that this was probably a case of if you want to see something and you stare long enough, it will appear. Looking at the pregnancy test, I saw one line. Not two, just one. Defeat. “No”, Heather said “…if you look at it from this angle, you can see the other line…”. Does that actually count? I didn’t think so and chalked this up to another disappointing negative test. “A line is a line”, Heather kept telling me. To me, it looked more like a line and a smudge. Apparently, I was wrong. Apparently, a line is a line.
We really racked up the test strips over the next few days. It was as if we needed confirmation that the previous 8 positives weren’t “false-positives”. So by the 13th or 14th test, we were both pretty confident that we were indeed pregnant.
By this time my head was already going a million miles an hour trying to figure out daycare, feeding schedules and all of the other necessities that we would eventually need. Heather was finally able to reel me in and remind me that we had a little bit of time before all of my worries came to fruition. Still, in about 8 months we were going to bring a baby into this world. A BABY!
It’s amazing how much your world changes even before the little one is born. During the entire pregnancy there were things that I suddenly started caring about, such as cleanliness. I’m not a “dirty” person, but I can leave the dishes out on the counter overnight just because. Having a baby hasn’t made me perfect, but I am thinking a lot more about germs and other little microbes that could potentially harm my little one. I’m sure taking a microbiology course during this time opened my eyes to the microscopic world around me and all of the fun little buggers in our bed, on our countertops and even on our skin. Blech! So much of our time was spent getting the apartment ready for baby…but by the time she was born, we had moved into a new apartment (which was wonderful because everyone around us smoked in their apartment and it was really starting to seep into ours).
I don’t know if it was because I relied so heavily on the description from “Father of the Bride II” on what it is like to deal with a pregnant woman, but I really did have a lot of fun with Heather throughout the entire pregnancy. Maybe it was that Heather was more prepared from all of the research she had done. Maybe it was that her hormones didn’t affect her as much as other women. Or maybe it was because she was tired and slept all the time. In any case, Heather remained independent for the most part (with the exception of needing help getting her socks and shoes on. She even helped moving into the new apartment at 6 months! (Well, it was more like she directed the move J ) I always knew that Heather would be a wonderful mother, but seeing her research everything under the sun and plan for what seemed like every possibility, she confirmed what I had known all along.
We wanted to wait until we saw our parents in person to tell them the great news, so we had a few bullets to dodge with our friends to avoid having them find out first. We had several instances where we, in the past, would typically have a few drinks with our friends but for obvious reasons Heather couldn’t drink. It was a good thing that Heather isn’t a big drinker to begin with, so the first couple of times it was easy to play off why she wasn’t imbibing. We deciding, on our way to an event, that we would tell people that Heather was on a medication that restricted her drinking….another bullet dodged. Living 4 states away from our families was making it increasingly difficult to be pregnant. But we did it! We were able to avoid (for the most part) divulging our big secret to our friends. Here is a video of us telling my parents - I knew we would get a great reaction from my mom, so we came prepared.
VIDEO (video is on my wife's computer, so I'll put it up later)
There were so many great moments during the pregnancy and I fell so much more in love with my baby and my wife with each one.
The heartbeat. It was the first ultrasound that we were able to see what would become our beautiful little girl. While there wasn’t much to see (basically a little ball), our doctor pointed out the little blip in the middle of the ball that was the heartbeat. Wow…this is for real! A little person. At one of our following appointments, another ultrasound showed our baby girl (what we called her during the pregnancy) was actually starting to take her shape. I just couldn’t stop smiling. That was my little girl. I think our favorite appointment was her first movement. It was as if baby girl had planned it all out and was just waiting for us to be watching. Our doctor checked a few things on baby girl before bringing her whole body into view. And just like that there she was. “…and here is your little dumpling…” our doctor says (I loved that she called her “dumpling”), a second later, baby girl kicks her little legs and punches out her little arms as if to say “Hey y’all! Check out my mad skills!”. Such a great moment and I think that was the first time my emotions got the best of me.
The kick. Heather had been starting to feel little movements from baby girl every now and then around the 15 week mark, but I had yet to feel a thing. Heather and baby girl were having all the fun and I was the odd man out. About a week later we were both reading in bed when she asked to see my hand. She placed it on her stomach and….nothing. With a little encouragement from mom shaking her belly, I felt baby girl kick for the first time. It was really more like a rolling, like one of those massage chairs from The Sharper Image (if you’re old enough to remember that store- saying that makes me feel so old). Now I’ve felt a baby kick before, but when it’s your baby, the amount of love you feel for someone who isn’t even here yet, is indescribable.
Anatomy class is in session. I already knew what was coming and I had been telling Heather all along that we were going to have a little girl. Even though there was a 50/50 chance that I was going to be right, I had such a strong gut feeling that we were going to have a girl, I would’ve put my life savings on it. I should be going to the race tracks with this “gut feeling” I have. As the ultrasound tech checked out the baby, I felt like I had had 5 cups of coffee and couldn’t sit still. I need to know….NOW! She moved the ultrasound to check the anatomy and as I looked at the screen I saw what was described in a book that I had read…3 parallel lines. “So….do you know what the sex is?” the ultrasound tech asked. Heather was a little hesitant because she didn’t want to be wrong and look silly. Silly is my middle name and I didn’t mind it if I was wrong, so I blurted out “…it’s a girl!” Heather originally was secretly hoping for a boy so the older brother could stick up for his little sister, but the more she thought about all of the lunch dates, mani-pedi’s and shopping trips to the mall, the more excited she became at the idea of having a little girl. We couldn’t be happier. She is the reason that we live and breathe. She is our everything.
I made it to most of Heather’s appointments throughout the pregnancy. I really wanted to be able to say that I was there for everything, but that darn thing called work kept getting in the way and ruining my no-hitter. Oh well. I gave it my best shot. I did, however, make it to the most important appointments (first ultrasound, anatomy scan, our last appointment to decide whether to induce) and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. We really, for the most part, had an uneventful pregnancy. We had a minor scare towards the beginning, but everything turned out to be A-OK and we now have a beautiful little girl.
As we came close to the 40 week mark, Heather seemed to be progressing very well. Her body was responding exactly as it should and baby girl was doing great. Heather wanted so badly to have a natural birth, free of chemicals and drugs. Little did we know that baby girl was going to be a bit stubborn. Because of our doctor’s schedule, we ultimately decided that we were going to be induced so we could have her deliver our baby (we really couldn’t have asked for a better doctor). Heather was a little upset at first about having to be induced, but that didn’t last long as we both thought about how our little girl would be here in a few short days.
We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 6AM Saturday morning. We wanted one last little date, so the night before, we went out to dinner and thought we would pick up a movie on the way home. While eating at California Kitchen, Heather said she started to feel contractions. She had had her membranes stripped by our doctor, so it really wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise though, was that the contractions started happening much more frequently and got a little stronger each time. We decided to just call it a night after going to Border’s and headed home, hoping to get a good night’s sleep before the big day. Well, baby girl deciding that she was sick of being cooped up and she wanted to come and say “Hey”. The contractions that Heather was having by the time we got home were so strong that she would have to put her head between her knees and just wince in pain. I have never felt so helpless. I am definitely a person that needs to fix things when they’re broken, and it felt like Heather was breaking- if only I had gone to med school and become an anesthesiologist. After a short while of Heather enduring these ever-strengthening contractions, we decided to call the hospital, who, in turn, told us that this was “it” and we should come in tonight…TONIGHT?! Whoa, whoa, whooooooaaaa….I now feel like Steve Martin in “Father of the Bride II” when he has all of his routes planned for the hospital, all of the bags packed and ready but when the time actually arrives, he has no idea what’s going on. My head was just trying to wrap itself around the fact that this baby was coming tonight….TONIGHT!! What made things worse, was that we had had the worst ice storm in Atlanta’s history and everything had been shut down for about a week. Most of the ice had melted, but it was still a little scary making our way to the hospital, especially because I had trouble trying to ignore Heather and keep my eyes on the road.
I knew how much Heather wanted to have a natural delivery, so I didn’t press the subject of an epidural. In fact, I didn’t bring it up at all. Heather’s contractions kept getting stronger, and it didn’t help that the nurses kept having her sign page after page of hospital forms. I guess thinking back now, I could have asked the nurses to either allow me to sign the forms, or come back later so we could get situated. But all I really kept thinking about was how any minute now, we were going to have a little girl…aaaany minute now….hmmmm….I think this is going to take a little longer than I expected.
By the time Heather got done signing all of the millions of forms, not only did she have extremely strong contractions, but also a mild case of carpal tunnel. The contractions finally got to the point where the pain was strong enough for Heather to consider medication. I wanted to wait until the contraction was over, so Heather could have a clear mind when I asked if she wanted to get an epidural, which she consented to. I felt bad that she had to get one, but relieved at the same time because it was difficult to see her in that much pain and not be able to do anything to relieve it. Epidurals are amazing. After looking like Heather might pass out from the pain of the contractions, she was now able to actually sleep through the contractions with the epidural. It was late and I was bored from staring at the monitor, so I decide to get some sleep myself.
12 hours later…..
