Wow! That's Really Weird...

"Wow! That's really weird" the first thing I said when seeing my child as he entered the world. Throughout my pregnancy I wondered what I would say the moment I saw my son - surely it would be something profound and dramatic like in the movies....nope not me. As I saw the doctor lifting him from my body all I could say was "Wow! That's really weird" followed by "Look at that cone head!" As you can imagine the statements got a quite a laugh from everyone in the room. Leave it to me to take a perfectly good potentially mushy sappy moment and turn it into a joke. Any who, it has been one week since I delivered my son but it seems so much longer.  I'm not going to go into too much detail about the labor but here is a very brief synopsis.  Bill and I checked in to the hospital to begin my induction on the morning of Tuesday, July 26. We were supposed to be there at 6 a.m. but in true Bill and Beth fashion we were running late arriving about 6:15 a.m. We settled into the room, started IV but didn't start the induction process until 9:00 a.m. The labor clock officially began but we were cognisant that induction can be a really long process and potentially could take 2 days before I delivered.  I just remember how the entire day I was extremely calm and at peace. Even with a few moments where things weren't going as planned; I never got nervous or anxious about what was occurring. Fast forward from 9 a.m. to midnight. My good friend Ashley was visiting, typical me was freshening up my makeup (Bill has video of me taking off my oxygen mask to put on more mascara - pretty funny to watch). After Ashley left I told Bill to turn out the lights because he needed to rest and there was no telling how long it was going to take. One hour later when the nurse checked me she said I was complete - dilated to 10 and fully effaced. She said she would go ahead and start to get everything ready in the room. I woke Bill up and told him it was time and to tell his parents who were in the waiting room that there had been good progress but not to tell them I was going to begin pushing (I had several friends that had to push 2-3 hours and didn't want them worrying on pins and needles for that long). At around 1:30 I began to push and at 2:39 my baby boy had arrived.

Pictures taken right after delivery

Morning after delivery - we were so happy to finally meet Mr. Man.

Our little boy

It's no secret how much I hated being pregnant.  You really have no control over what is occurring with your body and there are so many restrictions on what you can or can not do.  For those of you that know me well, I am quite the control freak so I think that fact combined with all of the bad symptoms made pregnancy even harder.  Maybe because of this I just didn't consider labor to be that bad.  The main thing that I think helped me is to just listen - listen to your body and listen to the medical staff because their goal is for you to have a safe delivery.  

Things that surprised me about labor and delivery: 

• How amazing the medical personnel was.  Don't get me wrong I didn't expect them to be bad but I seriously had the BEST doctor, day and night nurse.  They really tried to make sure I was as comfortable as possible, were so supportive and did a great job at explaining things.   
• How much of a cone head babies have right out of the womb - really I had never seen a "fresh" newborn and as Mike Myers would say in his best Irish accent "That cone head was freakin' huge man"!
• How gruesome things can be.  No matter how many books or experts tell you until you see some of the things that occur "down there" there's just no way to fully prepare yourself.  For some reason the movie SAW pops into my head.  (Sorry to be graphic but this is a post about Labor and Delivery).
• How your body kicks into gear and can function without sleep.  After Wednesday night when our last visitor left I realized I had not slept in 48 hours and I wasn't even that tired.
• How great staying in the hospital can be - really I don't understand why some are so eager to leave quick.  I had someone come and take my food order for the day each morning and they delivered snacks throughout the day.  If I was in pain a nurse would bring medication.  When I needed something or needed someone to watch Mr. Man all I had to do was call the nursery to come pick him up.  Speaking of the shower - it was bigger than any I had at my house!   

But alas all good things often come to an end..so after 48 hours in the hospital we were finally released to come home and begin adjusting to our new life.  How are things going?  Surprisingly really well.  I think partly because I have always been a "glass half empty" kind of person so since I was expecting the worst I've been pleasantly surprised.  Don't get me wrong - we've definitely had our share of nerve rattling moments during massive meltdowns but so far neither of us have packed our bags and jumped shipped.  We even survived the first bathing experience:

Motherhood for me may have started with a typical quirky Beth comment but it has definitely evolved into each day being filled with plenty of amazing moments. Stay tuned...