Jack's Birthday!

Let me just say that I had typed up half of this post on our tablet and it ended up deleting itself and I felt like I might break the tablet in half. Thankfully calmer heads prevailed and I am going to attempt to recreate what I had written, but with my bizarre sleep schedule who knows what's going to come out of this... Hopefully I don't leave out any important parts, like that I gave birth, but I won't make any promises.

Apparently we were smart to spend all of last weekend getting together last minute items and cleaning up the baby's room because Jack decided he was done with that whole cozy womb thing and made his appearance early Wednesday morning. I ended up being 37 weeks pregnant the day he was born, which means he is normal baby length but has tiny chicken legs since he didn't have the last three weeks in the womb where all babies do is gain weight. I'm going to type some sort of synopsis of the day he was born, but without details of every fluid gushing out of my body and what not because ewwwwwwwww. If you're not really into birthing stories, feel free to scroll down to just the pictures, nobody will judge you for it.

So Tuesday morning David and I were talking about how extremely inconvenient it would be for me to go into labor that night since he was planning to go downtown to meet up with friends after work. For some reason as we left for work he told me "Don't get pregnant", which I interpreted as "Don't go into labor" since, from what I've heard, it is extremely hard to get pregnant while already pregnant. That night I had settled into my "husband is out of the house" routine which consists of non-stop reality tv shows on Bravo and eating random things from the fridge and pantry instead of a proper meal. This ended up consisting of a salad, applesauce, and cheese balls. I had to tell two different nurses what I had eaten before going to the hospital and besides being thoroughly embarrassed at my cheese ball snack choice I also felt the need to over explain what cheese balls were. It went something like ".....and cheese balls.....the orange ones....that come in the huge bucket...that are not good for you...".  I'm pretty confident we're now on a list somewhere for someone to check in on us and make sure we aren't feeding the baby mountain dew instead of breast milk.

Anyway, at some point in this wild night (around 8) I heard a pop and felt like either I had fully entered old ladyhood and was now incontinent or my water had broken. I had always imagined that if my water had broken I would be a panicky mess, but I mostly just thought "FOR REAL????" and since I was already texting with her decided to call Hayley.  In retrospect, I should have called 1) my husband 2) the doctor or 3) anyone who lives in the DFW metroplex, but Hayley ended up with the first call and I can't really remember, but I vaguely remember her being confused and then telling me to call the doctor (thank you for being the voice of reason). I'll also say I imagined my water breaking was going to be a one time sort of gush out  (I realize I'm already going against what I said about the dirty details, but I swear I'll keep it without every gory thing), but it really was more like spurts of water to where when David finally made it back to our house (after a MY WATER BROKE phone call to him) I had almost run out of pants to wear to the hospital. I also kept thinking "I'm going to have to SERIOUSLY mop this bathroom floor", which maybe wasn't the right thing to be focused on at that time. David made it home and we drove to the hospital and the entire time we both talked about how surreal it was to be going to the hospital to have the baby, it kind of just felt like we were taking a late night drive around the block. I want to throw out a special shout out and thanks to Hayley who obviously knew that my water had broken and hopped into a car and drove all the way from Houston to come by while I was in labor, you're the best!

We made it to the hospital and the first nurse (who was seriously awesome, shout out Alex!) checked me and then told me she'd be right back.... to which another nurse came in and said "YOU'RE FREAKING THIS NURSE OUT, SHE THINKS YOU'RE DILATED ALREADY BUT NOT IN PAIN". So she did her exam and she said I was already at 7 cm, they basically thought my uterus was a total over achiever. I was able to get an epidural and they give you this button to push if you feel like you need a little more pain relief with a blinky green light to tell you when you can have some (spaced out to every 10 minutes so you don't go too crazy).  Well at first I would just push the button every once in awhile, then I would just stare at the green light waiting for it to tell me when I could push it again, and then I ended up just clicking that button continuously on the off chance that it was time for another dose.  There was basically no way I was going to get caught without pain medication when it was time to push. We spent from 8 pm Tuesday night until about 7 am the next morning just kind of hanging out (love you SO much epidural!) until they had me push and at 9:22 am our sweet baby Jack entered the world. He weighed in at 5 lbs 7 oz., 18 1/2 in long, and all kinds of cuteness.

Without getting into everything, he ended up in the NICU basically bc he hadn't quite gotten the hang of breathing and decided to go blue on us a few times. We were totally freaked out, nothing quite prepares you for nurses running with your child down the hall out of your room, but everyone in the NICU was so sweet, kind, and understanding. We would go down there every 3 hours for his feedings and to hold him, and he only had to stay one extra day in the hospital after I was discharged. We are so thankful that he got such great care and that he is perfectly healthy and happy now. Both David and I said that seeing all the babies in the NICU, most of them half the size of Jack, made us realize how lucky we were and helped us stop moping around the hospital about him having to be in the NICU.

The only thing I'll say about recovering from birth is that you become very indifferent to modesty. I'm fairly confident that by the end of my 3 nights in the hospital that everyone within a 10 mile radius of the hospital had seen all of my lady parts and I could not have cared less about it. We are all home now and trying to figure each other out, mostly our dog trying to figure out what kind of bizarre animal we have decided to bring home and ruin his life with. He's been a little extra dramatic about getting attention, but is slowly warming up to the idea of having this little baby hanging around his domain. I'll try and keep up with posts, but I'm not sure how long I can last on the fumes I've been running on and basically all the time that I'm awake is spent taking pictures of Jack (they're pretty much all of him sleeping....). Thanks to all of our friends and family who have stopped by and brought us food or sent us messages when we were upset about the NICU situation. You all have helped us more than I can ever explain!