Birth Story

SHORT STORY:

Andrew was born on August 18, after 9 hours of labour & 18 minutes of pushing, weighing 7lb9oz and 19.5 inches long. My “birth plan” was to be flexible, get him out safely, and give me all the drugs.

LONG STORY:

Thursday morning I started contracting and by 3am was headed to the hospital (due to contractions being 3-5 minutes apart) only to be told that I was – at most – a “small” 3 and not quite fully effaced. The contractions slowed down to about 8-10 minutes apart so they sent me to walk around for 2 hours to see if I could make any progress that way – only to have them stop altogether. So we headed home and after a nap, the contractions increased in intensity throughout the day but never got closer than 5 to 8 minutes apart … by 6am I couldn’t take the pain anymore. When they hit I couldn’t do anything but pace back and forth across the dining room.

Went back to the hospital yet again, got another NST and cervical check, only this time I was – FINALLY – a 4 and 100% effaced. They still sent me to go walk around for half an hour to see if the contractions would get closer together; they also warned me that if I was going to eat then do it now since the anesthesiologist wouldn’t give me an epidural if I had eaten within the last two hours. So we grabbed coffee and a bagel and walked around – the contractions never really got closer together but the pain was just too much. We headed back to the birthing unit to get checked in at 8am, and I asked for some sort of pain meds, only to be told by some nurse (whom I never saw again, thank goodness) that she’d rather I hop in the Jacuzzi instead of giving me drugs (which, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t adverse to doing, but HELLO, if I ask for some drugs, GIVE ME THE EFFING DRUGS).

After I met all the nurses and residents and all that lovely hospital jazz, I hopped in the Jacuzzi for about a half hour – I got so bored and the water grew way too cold to do anything effective for the pain. At this point they tried to break my water but couldn’t find the bag to break – the OB resident couldn’t tell for sure if it was his head or not that she was scraping against.

They came back to check me at 10am to no progress, so DH and I decided to just go walk around the hospital – I knew I wanted an epidural at some point but I also knew I wanted to delay it as long as I could – but I really needed something for the pain. They gave me 4mg of Dilaudid, which was awesome. I could still feel the contractions but I wasn’t yelping in pain – when they hit I would just put my arms around DH’s neck (and he would put his arm around my waist) and breathe through them. They started coming fast and furious – it felt like I went through 75 in a 5 minute span ;). We went back to the room and got re-checked – I had gone from a 4 to a 6 in 90 minutes! I decided to just keep walking and they would recheck me in 2 hours.

At the end of the 2 hours the drugs were wearing off and I was getting exhausted from essentially being up with pain for the last two days. I remember feeling very, very out of it, trying to focus on what was happening around me but I just couldn’t. I quickly decided I didn’t want to go back to being in pain so I asked for the epidural. I was very surprised at how quick it all happened – within twenty minutes it was all placed and I was back to not feeling anything.

At this point, the contractions slowed down, so the nurse suggested starting picotin to help – and seeing as I couldn’t feel the contractions anymore, it didn’t matter to me. At this point I actually fell asleep! I was texting one of my friends about being in labour and I would pass out with the phone in my hand. I dozed in and out for the next hour and a half to two hours while Keith went downstairs to grab something to eat.

I woke up really needing to pee and was able to get out of bed but wasn’t able to go, so they did a quick in and out catheter. When I shifted back into bed, I could feel intense pressure in my pelvic area; the nurse checked me and told me that I was at a full 10 and his head was “right there”. They debated calling the OB and having me start pushing but I told them I probably wouldn’t be able to help myself if I just shifted a little more to the center. So at 4:45pm I started pushing – which hurt like the EFFING DICKENS, OH MAH GAWD, I just wanted him OUT – and at 5:03pm Andrew Wylie was born weighing 7lb9oz and 19.5 inches long.

Then all the usual stuff happened; Keith cut the cord, they checked him over, I delivered the placenta, and they stitched up the second degree tear I got. In fact, it took them longer to do that than it did to push him out! They tried laying him on my chest while they sewed me up but I was at such a weird angle that he ended up lying on my throat and it just wasn’t comfortable. Once they were all done with the stitchery, they put him to my breast to try feeding, and he latched on perfectly. We chilled out for the next couple of hours; I took a quick shower and got dressed and by 8pm were wheeled down to the Mother/Baby Unit. 

And now for the part I know you all actually want to see – pictures!

We’ve been out at least once every single day since he’s been born. He loves his carseat but only if it’s in the car & moving. 

Milk drunk face … friggin cutie!

How I spend most of my time … please excuse the utter slobbiness that is myself.

Keith and Andrew having some daddy-son time. Keith has just been AMAZING, both with dealing with me and spending time with Andrew. Seriously. Am so blown away by him.

 

 

 

17 weeks (my baby is an asshole)

My baby is an asshole.

I say that in the most loving way possible, trust me. 

But still.

An asshole. 

I’m still gagging and puking and extremely fatigued. This does not bode well for trying to manage a household and two jobs. Even I’m getting sick of the amount of times I have to call in sick, and I haven’t received a full two weeks pay since December. The bank account is hurting, yo.

One bright spot is that my contract is up at Wal*Mart at the end of the month, and I don’t even care. Yes, I’ll take a slight pay cut and probably a few less hours a week with turning the Tim Hortons job into full time, but at least I can manage one full time job. And you know what? I actually like the Tim Hortons job/overall atmosphere better. I just do. As long as they don’t give me the 3-11 shift exclusively.

 We need to move, and I’d like to move before I get too big to actually do anything. Originally we were toying with the idea of staying in our one bedroom apartment until the baby was about 6 months old and just put their crib in our room, but frankly, I’m done paying $4.25 per load of laundry and living in 713sq ft with two adults and two animals. I couldn’t even imagine trying to fit a baby in here too – yeah, we have a place for it to sleep, but then what?

We’ve started looking and I think we’ve found the place we want, if the landlord agrees to rent to us without doing a credit check. We’re going from a one bedroom apartment to a three bedroom townhouse. I’m way too excited about this.  I never really wanted to live here and have been wanting to move for ages. Please keep your fingers uber crossed for us that it all works out!

In other baby news, I haven’t felt any movement yet, but it’s still early, and I do have a LOT of belly padding that makes me think I won’t feel them until way later than usual. Also? Thanks to this lovely belly padding, I am not showing at ALL. I lost 9 pounds the first trimester, in fact, and from months 3-4 I’ve only gained 2.2 overall (however, I’m sure by July I’ll be here bitching about how much of a whale I’ve turned into, don’t you worry!)

I just scheduled our 20 week anatomy scan for March 22nd. So close and yet so very, very far away. I can’t wait to find out the sex. I’m hoping for a girl, Keith wants a boy. Between the two of us, we have it covered, I think. 

What’s going on with your lives, my dears? Any exciting news to share, or is the same old hum-drum?

Reason

I know I owe you recaps. I know I still have to write the majority of my thank you notes. I know I still have to pick out all the professional photos we want printed. I know I have a super messy house where I consider it an accomplishment if we have a supply of clean laundry and enough clean dishes to eat off of (which, lets be honest, has mostly fallen to Keith lately).

But I have a reason for all this.  For the last ten and a half weeks, I’ve been sort of busy. The type of busy that has me exhausted and sick and (quite frankly!) hating life. Turns out I don’t do so well when I feel like crap the majority of the time (who knew?!).

And then I saw this little nugget waving their arm at me in a darkened ultrasound room. And I heard a heartbeat that was not my own fill the room.

And you know… All these weeks of misery? Kind of worth it.

Actually, make that totally worth it.

Lettuce marry! (A-D)

Oh, you guys.

I’m so sorry.

I never meant to make you wait so long to start wedding recaps, but my schedule is insane. When I say I have a ‘day off’, I actually mean I don’t have to work a double shift, not that I truly have a day off. (Yeah. I know.)

That, coupled with the fact that our photographer took a full month to get our pictures to us, means that it’s now December and I’m just starting on recaps now.

So, enough babbling. Let the recaps commence!!

PREFACE: I am blatantly stealing this recap format from hillarywithtwoL’s.  I only wish I were this original. You can find her wedding recaps here.

Lettuce marry!

A – C

Awkward: First, you need to know that we stayed in a loft suite, with a king bed downstairs and a queen in the loft. Now, onto the story itself: While we were getting ready in the hotel the day of, the fire alarm went off. We debated for approximately five minutes what to do – I had most of my family staying in the hotel and wanted to avoid seeing them in my lovely half done state (I believe I even had a green hair clip incorporated in my hair at the time) and we were debating – is it real? Do we grab the dress? WHAT DO WE DO OH MY GOD. Finally, we all evacuated – leaving the dress – while Peggy and I went down the back stairs in an effort to avoid seeing people. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, but when we came back, my flower girl noticed someone sleeping in the loft bed. When we went to wake the poor guy up, he was so out of it he told me this was ‘Brad’s room’ and forgot his shoes. I don’t know what his deal was, but holy awkwardsauce.

Bridespeople:  Keith and I each had four people standing up for us – of both genders. I had what I affectionately called a ‘bridesman’ and Keith had two groomswomen (I also had my two best friends and my sister, along with my most favourite nine year old in the world as a flower girl/Jr. Bridesmaid, and Keith had his brother and a good friend). Based on the number of comments I received, all of our guests were so impressed that we broke with tradition – something I will never understand. It’s 2011; Keith and I both have opposite gender friends, why wouldn’t they be included in our special day because they don’t have the same parts? (Although I suspect I will never be quite fully forgiven for the number of times Shawn got called the groom during the various things I dragged him to during the planning process. Sorry dude).

Cake: We had a fairly traditional four-tier cake done by TheCakeWhisperer. The bottom and top layers were red velvet with cream cheese and the two middle tiers were chocolate with raspberry filling. Too bad I had approximately one bite of the entire thing. We also had her make two additional toppers – an Andy Moog goalie mask for Keith and a copy of HitchHiker’s Guide for me.

 

Colours: Our colours were orange, silver/dark gray, with white to balance it out. It worked out beautifully – a million thank you’s to Shawn for suggesting the combination. I was going to do the boring, traditional colour scheme associated with fall. Let’s just say it would have been quite a different wedding. 

Dance: We fought for weeks over what our first dance would be. We finally settled on “Lay me down” by Ashley MacIassac the Thursday before the wedding. When we went to dance, my brother side-whispered that he accidentally downloaded it onto the wrong computer and didn’t have it. I still don’t know what song we danced to, and I suspect I won’t ever know – and I’m okay with that. We were too busy figuring out which of our guests were tearing up watching us dance. I think my sister won. 

Dresses: I got so many compliments on my outfit – I wore a strapless lace gown with a sweetheart neckline, with lace detail and a long lace train. I LOVE lace, but in my size (bridal size 20 when I bought it) there aren’t a lot of lace dresses. I went to four stores and only tried on what I could fit into. I added a three-quarter sleeve lace shrug because it was October and we don’t live in Florida; I feel as if it really ‘made’ the dress. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to sew the shrug to the dress itself because I was fiddling with it all day. Also, my bustle broke within three seconds of putting it in, so Peggy ran around finding safety pins and pinning it up the best she could all night. But other than those two issues, my dress was absolutely perfect.

My girls dresses I found on Etsy. I knew I wanted the colour (dark gray) and the length (knee) but I also wanted to give the girls some choice and freedom of what kind of neckline they were comfortable with, so I thought the wrap infinity dress would be the perfect fit. In the end, I’m not sure it was worth the stress of trying to figure them out, but everyone did something different and looked amazing.

The groomswomen were given a few instructions, which they ignored all but one (the colour, black). Let’s just say it was a nice lesson in letting go and leave it at that, shall we? [ insert huge sigh here ]. Oh well.

Check back soon for recaps from E-H!

aaand *thump*

At the end of September I received a letter from the student loan national centre saying because I had failed a course in the summer semester, I would be denied any further funding for a period of three years.

Let’s face it; if I leave my program now, and for three years, there is a high possibility I will never go back. There’s really only one option – funding the rest of my degree (and my living expenses) completely on my own dime. Cue panic. Originally I thought I had to come up with full Winter tuition – just under 2900$ – by the end of December. Thankfully, that’s not the case – I have until I go to re-register in late April/early May to pay the full amount (WHEW).

Thankfully I already have a full time job, so that takes care of my living expenses. I immediately started searching for a second part-time job to cover tuition, and received an offer of employment last Friday, the day before the wedding.

This past week was my first week working two jobs, although I wasn’t quite successful. It took until at least Thursday to feel even half decently rested from the craziness that was the week before and weekend. I fully understand why people take a honeymoon immediately after the wedding – its needed (it also didn’t help that Keith took the week off himself, so all I wanted to do was be home with him and snuggle a lot). I should have taken this week off regardless of the financial picture; I only managed to work 19 hours at my full time job (as opposed to the 38 hours I usually work) and 18.5 at my new job. This paycheque is gonna hurt.

This week? I work double shifts three days in a row, and again on Thursday and Sunday. I predict consuming A LOT of Monster in my future.

Have you ever worked two jobs? Any tips on how to survive? How did you pay for post-secondary?

Finally! I’m a Mrs!

Hey!

I’m MARRIED, y’all!

And it was AMAZING. Everybody has been raving about how great it was and how perfectly everything looked and went.

My mom actually said I should go into wedding planning – and this is coming from someone who thinks weddings are silly, unnecessary affairs. I WIN.

For recaps I’m going to wait for the professional pictures to come back, but for now I’ll leave you with what is going to be one of the best pictures of the day (I just know it):

you & i together forever

Mine:

-6 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Keith:

9 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Poor (  Failure) Take the test!

Aboot (need not apply)

Just wanted to pop in & do this accent vlog that’s been going around.

(and yes, completely in denial about what’s happening in 7 days. do. not. judge).

So you’re supposed to say these words:

Aunt, route, wash, oil, theatre, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pajamas, caught

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

And answer these questions:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that curls into a ball when you touch it?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you use to change the TV channel? 

hair & makeup!

I’m so pleased with all of it. Especially my hair.