How he got here

I was talking today to a work friend about the baby she's going to have in November. She's a couple of years younger than me, and this is her first baby. She and her husband hadn't planned on having kids, but surprise! Now they have a little boy coming next month.

She's going to deliver in the same hospital where Biscuit arrived.

And it occurred to me that I started this blog a couple of months after Biscuit got here, so I never wrote a blog about his arrival.

Biscuit was due on Thanksgiving Day. And after three years of fertility treatments and one miscarriage, I thought there couldn't have been a more appropriate day for him to arrive.

But he decided that he didn't want to wait that long to arrive, so he showed up three weeks early.

A couple we're friends with had a baby due about three months after Biscuit, so Jeff and the other dad went to a Daddy Boot Camp class one Saturday. I would've paid big money to be a fly on the wall in that classroom. Jeff and his friend are not really the Daddy Boot Camp class-type, even though they are both great, hands-on dads.

While the men were in class, both of us soon-to-be mamas went shopping. We walked all over an outdoor shopping mall here in town, then met our husbands after their class for pancakes.

I was tired after walking that much, so Jeff and I went home to relax. We got home about 3 in the afternoon, and I told Jeff I'd like to lie on our bed and watch TV. We just chilled out for a while, but at 5 p.m., I sat straight up and said to Jeff, "I need to make chocolate pies."

He said, "You NEED to make chocolate pies?"

"Yes!" I said.

That far into the pregnancy, Jeff knew the routine. As soon as I said yes, he asked, "Can I help?" That was the absolute perfect question.

"Yes," I said. "You can build up your arm muscles by stirring the pie filling as it cooks."

After the pies were done, I had him take one to a friend's house, and we had some of the other one. We spent the rest of the night just hanging out together.

Little did we know we were spending our last evening alone!

About 3 a.m., I sat straight up in bed. I thought I was having a bad dream and had wet the bed. Then I realized, that's not a missed trip to the bathroom, my water just broke!

I got up and started walking to the bathroom. I meant to tap Jeff's leg as I walked by, but I got a little more contact than I thought. I slapped his leg at the same time I called his name.

He jumped up with his eyes half open, "What? What? What's going on?"

My water just broke. We need to call the hospital.

"I thought you were supposed to go into labor before your water broke?" Jeff asked.

I have to say, I was impressed. Clearly, he had been listening in our birthing class.

"Technically, that's how it's supposed to happen, but you know me, I can't do anything the normal, easy way," I said to him.

I called the hospital to ask about what we should do, and they said call my doctor.

I called the on-call number for my doctor group and assumed I would get a voicemail or an operator, and someone would call me back. That's why I was really surprised when a doctor answered the phone, sounding really groggy. Little did I know at the time, he had already delivered two other babies that day, one only a couple of hours before I called him in the middle of the night.

I told him what was going on, and he said he'd meet me at the hospital.

So at 4 a.m. Sunday, November 9, 2008, Jeff and I headed to the women's hospital here in town. My contractions had started before we left home, so we knew it wouldn't be long until we had our new baby boy.

I called my parents from the car. It takes them about 2 1/2 hours to drive up here. They were surprised to hear from me since it was three weeks before Biscuit's due date. Plus, they were supposed to be leaving that Monday on a group trip to Myrtle Beach. A trip they had already paid for, I might add. But they took time to pack and were on their way.

I got settled into a birthing room, and there was much hulabaloo. I got an IV and an internal monitor for Biscuit, then they asked me about a thousand questions. I had three nurses working on me all at once. I didn't know which one to look at or talk to next.

I was in labor for, I guess about 10 hours total. Although, I did get an epidural that made that last hour pretty pleasant! Actually, the anesthesiologist put the epidural in, and nothing changed. One of the nurses scolded me. "You need to take a nap and get some rest. You've got a busy evening ahead of you."

I couldn't figure out how she expected me to take a nap when I was still having contractions strong enough that I thought I was going to yank the bed rail off and hand it to Jeff.

"Um, this might be a stupid question," I asked her. "But, how can I take a nap when I'm still having strong contractions? What exactly am I supposed to be feeling right now?"

"You should be relaxed enough to go to sleep," she said.

"Um, nope," I told her.

She called the anesthesiologist back in. I'm not sure what he did to that epidural, but about 10 minutes later, life was pretty darn good! I remember my parents coming in and talking, but I don't remember a thing they said or when they left.

I woke up after about half an hour, and there were a couple of nurses and the doctor hovering around the fetal monitor screen. Those monitors are cool because you hear the constant beat of the baby's heart. But even before the doctor said anything, I had a contraction, and I heard the baby's heart get slower and slower and slower.

I was starting to get worried because I could tell by the way they were talking that something was wrong. I turned to Jeff, who had been holding my hand, rubbing my arms and back and helping me breathe the whole time.

And speaking of that, let me take a break right here and say that Jeff was so good throughout my whole pregnancy. He doctored on me during some awful morning sickness. He rubbed my feet once they started swelling. And God bless him, he ate Mexican food three or four times a week for the last month when that was what I was craving.

But mostly, he was just patient. I had a couple of pretty rough mood swings. One involved Jeff getting Chinese takeout for dinner. That in itself was really nice, but then once he got the food home, he had the nerve to put the chicken and broccoli ON TOP OF MY RICE!!!!! I usually eat my chicken and broccoli separate from the rice, but that day, for some reason, it was very, very, VERY important that the chicken and broccoli should not touch the rice.

I was sitting on the couch with my feet propped up, and Jeff brought my food into the living room on a tray. You'd think I'd be excited and grateful. But nope! I was MAD!

"JEFF! You put the chicken and broccoli on top of the rice! I can't eat it that way!" I yelled at him. Then I burst into tears. Poor Jeff thought he could just fix the problem by going back into the kitchen and separating the chicken and broccoli into one bowl and the rice in the other bowl.

Poor Jeff.

When he came back into the living room, I explained to him in a not-nice way that his idea was completely ridiculous, and he needed to go back into the kitchen and make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Do you know what Jeff did? He went back into the kitchen and made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Of course, I was pretty crazy that day, so he might have just been too scared of me to do anything else!

Anyway, back to the hospital. So every time I had a contraction, Biscuit's heart rate dropped. He had moved down some but not enough for me to start pushing.

Then I heard the doctor say, "We might be looking at a C-section." I wasn't really prepared for that. But at that point, I just wanted that baby out and safely in my arms.

We waited as long as we could, but the doctor was getting worried about Biscuit. So we made the call to do a C-section, and it was like somebody flipped a switch. Everybody in the room started doing stuff to get me ready. It was really weird to just lie there and have all these people working on me.

They put Jeff in a white spacesuit-looking outfit and wheeled me into the operating room.

And then it occurred to me. My epidural didn't work when they first put it in. Am I going to feel them cutting my belly open?!?

I called the anesthesiologist over to ask, and she assured me that I wouldn't feel a thing ... except coldness! I was freezing!!

I was also sleepy. I remember telling Jeff over and over, "Don't let me fall asleep. I don't want to miss it."

They did the surgery stuff, and I heard Biscuit cry for the first time. "Is that him?" I asked.

A nurse grabbed our camera and took our very first family portrait.

Then all of a sudden, they whisked Jeff and Biscuit out of the room. They were still doing surgery stuff on me, but Jeff and Biscuit went to the nursery for Biscuit to get officially weighed and measured and to get his first bath.

When they were finished with me, they wheeled me out to the recovery room. I was the only patient in there, so the recovery nurse spent a lot of time just sitting and chatting with me. That was really nice because it seemed like forever until they brought Jeff and Biscuit in.

The recovery nurse did photography as a hobby, so she took some really nice pictures of us. She was a sweet girl. She also looked about 12 years old, but she took good care of me, so I didn't care how old she was!

Here's one of the pictures she took of us. And I think you know the story from there!