« Catching Up is Hard to Do | Main | Sam: Pimpin' with His Duck »
December 03, 2006
He'll Never Meet His Grandmother, But He Will
The baby is good. Other than having his days and nights mixed up, Sam seems to be a happy and (as his doctor calls him) "perfect" baby. He eats a lot, sleeps in quick bursts, and seems to like it when I bounce him on my knee and pretend that he's Verne Troyer in that Geico commercial. He seems to like rap.
Melissa and I sleep when we can. This has affected my work schedule somewhat, as I have been going into teh office later than usual for the last couple of weeks -- and working more from home -- but I fully expect my schedule to get back to normal over the next couple of weeks. Melissa is on leave until the end of January.
Oh yeah, the birth... While I've uploaded a fair share of pics of Sam for all to see, I've been kind of quiet concerning the actual birth of our son. I'll try to run it down quickly.
At 2 a.m. on Saturday, November 11, Melissa's water broke. While it wasn't messy, it was only an hour after we'd gone to bed, so we got our stuff together and took our still-sleepy selves to Women's East. (Women's East is a GREAT place to have a baby, by the way. The staff was amazing and the atmosphere is EXTREMELY laid back and comforting.)
We checked in easily and soon fell back to sleep. As the contractions increased, however, so did the pain Melissa was feeling. Not being able to sleep or stand the pain, she received an epidural well before dawn, and would spend most of the morning asleep.
At 2 p.m., Melissa was dialated a full 10 centimeters and started to push soon afterwards. While she didn't feel much pain, she did get tired easily. She kept going, however, even when the nurse informed us that the baby was coming out nose-up. After two hours of somewhat futile pushing, this gave us two options: we could try to deliver naturally with the aid of suction and forceps, or we could have a c-section. Melissa didn't want to have a c-section, so Dr. Steele was brought in. (A FANTASTIC nurse named Vounette had been helping us deliver to this point.) A mere 15 or so minutes and a few pushes later, Dr. Steele -- who replaced our normal doctor (Dr. Newman) who had to take her state boards that week -- applied suction and used the forceps to deliver the baby. The cord was slightly wrapped around the baby's neck, so instead of allowing me to cut the cord, Dr. Steele quickly passed Sam over to the nurses who quickly checked him out and cleaned him up. He cried pretty much immediately.
While my generally weak stomach kept me from watching Sam as he was being born, I saw him immediately as the doctor delivered him. Sam was pale, covered in blood, squirming, and crying, and I almost lost it. He was pretty much the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and with Melissa having a miscarriage the last time around, I can't describe how elated I was to have a healthy baby. I've been floating ever since, and am having trouble remembering life before parenthood -- as weird as that may sound.
Minutes after he was born, Sam was swaddled and passed to me. I brought him over to Melissa, who began to tear up. She held him, then did the rest of her family. Melissa's mother, cousin Shannon, and our sister-in-law Heather were all in the room for the birth, and all helped greatly. Melissa's father, Shannon's husband Jason, and Melissa's brother Dan soon came in, and we all took turns smiling and holding Sam. It was a great day.
After two days -- and bunches of visitors -- we took Sam home.
But what about my family? One of the most moving aspects of the day Sam was born was that, in addition to also being Melissa's cousin Shannon's birthday, it was also the same day -- November 11 -- that my mother passed away on in 1997.
Shortly after Sam was born, it hit me that he was going to the first of my parents' grandchildren that my mother would never get to meet. Later, on the phone, my sister Tracy pointed out the matching dates. (For some reason, for the last few years, I'd been thinking that my mom died on November 7.) Tracy put it best when she said that Sam's birth had taken a bad day and made it a great day. While my mom won't know Sam, he will likely feel a special connection to her. And his birthdays will likely lead to us telling him stories about her. I think it's also safe to say that she would have spoiled him like crazy.
My sister, brother-in-law, and niece are coming to visit this week. My dad and stepmom -- who are waiting until Christmas is over to shut down their store in Connecticut -- are coming at the first of the year. Plans are still being hashed out for us to hook up with my other sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Not only is my family bigger, it's more spread-out. Hopefully, Sam will meet everybody before he starts shaving.
And then there's the truck... A week or so before Sam was born, Melissa and I were making plans to buy a car from a friend who was moving out of town. When Melissa told her mother, Melissa's mother told her not to buy a car. Her brother then called and told her the same thing. The night before Sam was born we found out why.
Melissa's brother bought us a truck as an early Christmas present. A 1996 Isuzu Rodeo. A guy on his job had it and wasn't using it much. Dan had everything fixed on it, took all the seats out and cleaned it, and even had a CD player installed in it. Needlessly to say, we were quite blown away and are EXTREMELY grateful. Dan said he did it because he'd never finished making payments on an old Volkswagen Beetle he'd bought from me in, like, 1994. Frankly, I'd completely forgotten and hadn't really minded in the first place. The car was a headache. Dan wound up totalling it, I'd gotten decent financial aid that semester, and it was REALLY no big deal.
Anyway, the truck is great and very helpful. Not only can we hold onto the money we were going to use to buy a car, Melissa can drive our Camry. I wanted to get a second car because I didn't like the idea of Melissa being stuck on the mountain with the baby and having no transportation. Now, we don't have to worry about it.
Also...
At the same time I'd been looking into getting a second car, I'd also been shopping for camcorders. We'd gotten a handful of Target giftcards -- enough to buy a camcorder. I'd gone into the store, jotted down a few that caught my eye, then went home to research them. I'd picked one and was planning to go back and get it when, on the way back from Provino's on the night before Sam was born, Dan and Heather gave us a camcorder as ANOTHER early Christmas present. At this point, I was pretty much speechless. And I was able to shoot about an hour's worth of footage the next day.
The day my son was born.
BILLets | By colrus | 03:56 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/35433
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference He'll Never Meet His Grandmother, But He Will:
