So. I'm rapidly approaching the first birthday of my third son. This feels HUGE to me.
Maybe it's because last year at this time I was huge. And not just the normal 'this is a third pregnancy so everything is so stretched out that you start to show as soon as you pee on the stick' huge. Oh no, I was big to the point that my doctor ordered a last minute ultrasound to make sure she would be delivering a baby and not a five year-old that week.
I waddled into that ultrasound appointment with my husband and two older sons in tow. For some reason "family outing to the medical center!" seemed like a good idea that morning at the breakfast table. Now that we were there, the boys were racing up and down the handicap ramps in the atrium, fighting over who got to press the button in the elevator, and testing the sensitivity of the automatic doors by running in and out of them screaming their heads off because, boys.
A woman in the elevator with us glanced at Kid #1 and Kid #2 and then looked at my swollen belly and said, hopefully, "Girl?"
"Nope. Another boy." I said, and braced myself.
"Well, you'll sure have your hands full, won't you?"
Ever notice how when people see a family with three boys they look at them like they're a traveling circus attraction and say something about how out of control their life must be with 'all that testosterone'? Yet when they see three girls it's always all "Awww, how adorable!"
Let's see how adorable those three girls are in about 15 years when their menstrual cycles synchronize and they're fighting over the bathroom like feral cats.
Anyway, we made it to the appointment and the doctor came in to review the results of the ultrasound, which I thought was unnecessary since Kid #1 had already seen the screen and had determined that the baby in my belly was, in fact, Darth Vader.
"So," I said, "Is the baby running out of room in there?" I mean, I could barely walk, I could barely breathe, my five year old had to help me get out of bed in the morning. There was no way the baby wasn't feeling the pressure to vacate my body. I wanted to vacate my body.
"Actually, no" the doctor said. "You have a lot of fluid in there. A LOT. Like, when your water breaks it isn't going to trickle, it's going to GUSH. You might consider tucking one of your kid's diapers in your underwear just in case."
"Those things really are super-absorbent" I agreed. "Sometimes we forget to change Kid #2 and by the end of the day his diaper weighs like five pounds but his clothes are TOTALLY DRY."
The doctor stared at me. "I'm going to recommend you get induced tomorrow. In the meantime, um, good luck."
Now, I'm not sure if it's normal, or even professional, for a doctor to wish you good luck before an impending labor and delivery, but that made me a little nervous. When I got home I started googling 'too much amniotic fluid', also known as polyhydramnios and read all about the possible causes (birth defects, spinal cord deformities, fetal infections) and potential dangers (placenta prolapse, placental abruption, cord strangulation) and thoroughly freaked myself out until my husband ordered me off the computer and onto the couch, where I sat, on a bath towel in case my water broke at home, until it was time to leave for the hospital.
For the record, after a sleepless night of worrying, baby #3 was born without any of the above problems, which is why Google is BAD.
When the doctor came in the next morning and broke my water it was if someone had turned on a faucet in a bathtub. Amniotic fluid was SPLASHING on the floor. Nurses had to change their shoes and scrubs. My husband decided maybe it was best if he left the room while we waited for someone with a mop and bucket to dry off the floor. I think he was worried about his socks getting wet.
That towel I'd been sitting on at home? HA! If my water had broken on the couch I would have been able to file an insurance claim to buy a new one.
At one point I was standing up in the delivery room while the nurse changed the bedsheets and I glanced down at the puddle I was standing in. It was GREEN. Yep, Kid #3 was so excited about his olympic sized swimming pool - er - my uterus - that he'd pooped in there. I started to get queasy. The nurse saw my face and shoved some sort of sachet of smelling salts in my face like I was Scarlett O'Hara at the ball. Luckily that shit works and I managed to NOT pass out or lose anymore bodily fluids.
It's so much fun when I run into that same nurse at the community pool in the summertime.
Oh, and did I mention that I had a raging case of poison ivy from some last minute gardening I'd decided to do the week before? All over my belly, hips and thighs? Every doctor or nurse who saw me recoiled in horror when they saw the raised red welts covering my core. It was like they didn't believe that a woman nine months pregnant with her third child would be stupid enough to get down on her hands and knees in the dirt and pull weeds and plant flowers.
Anyway, by the time it was determined that Kid #3 was all tangled up in the cord and needed to be born via Cesarean section and I was laying on the operating room table being shaved and prepped for surgery, I decided I would never again be embarrassed about not shaving my legs before an annual visit to the OBGYN, and neither should you.
Trust me, they've seen much, much worse.
All I remember from the C-section was shaking uncontrollably from the epidural and the truly lovely woman who gave me some Demerol to stop it. I'm pretty sure it was a nurse. Next thing I knew they were holding my baby boy up to my face, all swaddled up like a Chipotle burrito. I kissed his cheek and said a few words to him so he'd have a face to put with the voice he'd heard screaming at his brothers for the past nine months and then he was whisked off to the nursery for observation. Turns out that besides the "ew" factor it can be kind of dangerous to ingest your own feces laced fluid. Hopefully it was the last time he will try that trick.
Then again, he's got two brothers.
So, that's it - my FINAL BIRTH STORY.
I've been very clear from the get-go that Kid #3 would be my last baby, and that has made so many things this year bittersweet as I've known they'd be my last.
My last bris, where I finally had the sense to LEAVE the room while the mohel was doing the cutting so I wouldn't turn into a bawling mess, providing me with the wherewithal to give a short speech about the love I have for all three of my boys and my feeling that our family is now complete.
My last 'omigod it's so great to finally be able to consume alcohol' celebration. Followed by the 'omigod it's so great to finally be able to take Advil and drink huge amounts of coffee' celebration.
My last night of baby falling asleep in my arms and me staying in that rocking chair an extra five or ten (or let's face it, fifteen) minutes because he felt so nice and also because I was too tired to face the screaming going on between Kid #1 and #2 downstairs. Now baby sees his crib and lunges head first into it so he can snuggle up with his teddy and babble to himself before drifting off. Next thing I know he'll be getting his own place.
In honor of Kid #3 turning ONE, and the fact that because he's turning ONE I am not having a blowout birthday party because I realized after Kid #1 that one year old's don't KNOW it's their birthday, I have a little bit of extra time on my hands. Also because I still haven't started a baby book for him so this blog is going to have to do, I'm going to write a series of posts about having a third child - why we decided to HAVE a third, what life has been like SINCE having a third, and how DIFFERENT we are with our third than we were with our first.
Stay tuned...
Maybe it's because last year at this time I was huge. And not just the normal 'this is a third pregnancy so everything is so stretched out that you start to show as soon as you pee on the stick' huge. Oh no, I was big to the point that my doctor ordered a last minute ultrasound to make sure she would be delivering a baby and not a five year-old that week.
I waddled into that ultrasound appointment with my husband and two older sons in tow. For some reason "family outing to the medical center!" seemed like a good idea that morning at the breakfast table. Now that we were there, the boys were racing up and down the handicap ramps in the atrium, fighting over who got to press the button in the elevator, and testing the sensitivity of the automatic doors by running in and out of them screaming their heads off because, boys.
A woman in the elevator with us glanced at Kid #1 and Kid #2 and then looked at my swollen belly and said, hopefully, "Girl?"
"Nope. Another boy." I said, and braced myself.
"Well, you'll sure have your hands full, won't you?"
Ever notice how when people see a family with three boys they look at them like they're a traveling circus attraction and say something about how out of control their life must be with 'all that testosterone'? Yet when they see three girls it's always all "Awww, how adorable!"
Let's see how adorable those three girls are in about 15 years when their menstrual cycles synchronize and they're fighting over the bathroom like feral cats.
Anyway, we made it to the appointment and the doctor came in to review the results of the ultrasound, which I thought was unnecessary since Kid #1 had already seen the screen and had determined that the baby in my belly was, in fact, Darth Vader.
"So," I said, "Is the baby running out of room in there?" I mean, I could barely walk, I could barely breathe, my five year old had to help me get out of bed in the morning. There was no way the baby wasn't feeling the pressure to vacate my body. I wanted to vacate my body.
"Actually, no" the doctor said. "You have a lot of fluid in there. A LOT. Like, when your water breaks it isn't going to trickle, it's going to GUSH. You might consider tucking one of your kid's diapers in your underwear just in case."
"Those things really are super-absorbent" I agreed. "Sometimes we forget to change Kid #2 and by the end of the day his diaper weighs like five pounds but his clothes are TOTALLY DRY."
The doctor stared at me. "I'm going to recommend you get induced tomorrow. In the meantime, um, good luck."
Now, I'm not sure if it's normal, or even professional, for a doctor to wish you good luck before an impending labor and delivery, but that made me a little nervous. When I got home I started googling 'too much amniotic fluid', also known as polyhydramnios and read all about the possible causes (birth defects, spinal cord deformities, fetal infections) and potential dangers (placenta prolapse, placental abruption, cord strangulation) and thoroughly freaked myself out until my husband ordered me off the computer and onto the couch, where I sat, on a bath towel in case my water broke at home, until it was time to leave for the hospital.
For the record, after a sleepless night of worrying, baby #3 was born without any of the above problems, which is why Google is BAD.
When the doctor came in the next morning and broke my water it was if someone had turned on a faucet in a bathtub. Amniotic fluid was SPLASHING on the floor. Nurses had to change their shoes and scrubs. My husband decided maybe it was best if he left the room while we waited for someone with a mop and bucket to dry off the floor. I think he was worried about his socks getting wet.
That towel I'd been sitting on at home? HA! If my water had broken on the couch I would have been able to file an insurance claim to buy a new one.
At one point I was standing up in the delivery room while the nurse changed the bedsheets and I glanced down at the puddle I was standing in. It was GREEN. Yep, Kid #3 was so excited about his olympic sized swimming pool - er - my uterus - that he'd pooped in there. I started to get queasy. The nurse saw my face and shoved some sort of sachet of smelling salts in my face like I was Scarlett O'Hara at the ball. Luckily that shit works and I managed to NOT pass out or lose anymore bodily fluids.
It's so much fun when I run into that same nurse at the community pool in the summertime.
Oh, and did I mention that I had a raging case of poison ivy from some last minute gardening I'd decided to do the week before? All over my belly, hips and thighs? Every doctor or nurse who saw me recoiled in horror when they saw the raised red welts covering my core. It was like they didn't believe that a woman nine months pregnant with her third child would be stupid enough to get down on her hands and knees in the dirt and pull weeds and plant flowers.
Anyway, by the time it was determined that Kid #3 was all tangled up in the cord and needed to be born via Cesarean section and I was laying on the operating room table being shaved and prepped for surgery, I decided I would never again be embarrassed about not shaving my legs before an annual visit to the OBGYN, and neither should you.
Trust me, they've seen much, much worse.
All I remember from the C-section was shaking uncontrollably from the epidural and the truly lovely woman who gave me some Demerol to stop it. I'm pretty sure it was a nurse. Next thing I knew they were holding my baby boy up to my face, all swaddled up like a Chipotle burrito. I kissed his cheek and said a few words to him so he'd have a face to put with the voice he'd heard screaming at his brothers for the past nine months and then he was whisked off to the nursery for observation. Turns out that besides the "ew" factor it can be kind of dangerous to ingest your own feces laced fluid. Hopefully it was the last time he will try that trick.
Then again, he's got two brothers.
So, that's it - my FINAL BIRTH STORY.
I've been very clear from the get-go that Kid #3 would be my last baby, and that has made so many things this year bittersweet as I've known they'd be my last.
My last bris, where I finally had the sense to LEAVE the room while the mohel was doing the cutting so I wouldn't turn into a bawling mess, providing me with the wherewithal to give a short speech about the love I have for all three of my boys and my feeling that our family is now complete.
My last 'omigod it's so great to finally be able to consume alcohol' celebration. Followed by the 'omigod it's so great to finally be able to take Advil and drink huge amounts of coffee' celebration.
My last night of baby falling asleep in my arms and me staying in that rocking chair an extra five or ten (or let's face it, fifteen) minutes because he felt so nice and also because I was too tired to face the screaming going on between Kid #1 and #2 downstairs. Now baby sees his crib and lunges head first into it so he can snuggle up with his teddy and babble to himself before drifting off. Next thing I know he'll be getting his own place.
In honor of Kid #3 turning ONE, and the fact that because he's turning ONE I am not having a blowout birthday party because I realized after Kid #1 that one year old's don't KNOW it's their birthday, I have a little bit of extra time on my hands. Also because I still haven't started a baby book for him so this blog is going to have to do, I'm going to write a series of posts about having a third child - why we decided to HAVE a third, what life has been like SINCE having a third, and how DIFFERENT we are with our third than we were with our first.
Stay tuned...
Comments
Post a Comment