Grandparents Meet Max

You had so many people who wanted to meet you after you were born. Unfortunately because we live so far away from all of your family, nobody could be at the hospital when you were born, as nobody knew exactly when you would be born. But your grandparents and cousins made the trip as soon as they possibly could.

The first people to arrive were Grammy and Grandpa, Aunt Shay, and all of your cousins. They arrived at the beginning of a LONG heat wave, and so it made more sense to hunker down in their hotel room in Lexington MA than our un-air conditioned apartment in Boston. Aunt Shay has been waiting a pretty long time for your dad and I to have a baby, and she couldn't wait to get her hands on you.

And your little cousins adored you. They loved to talk to you in a high pitched sing-songy voice and they all called you Baby Max. They were curious about everything about you, from your eyelashes, to your belly button, to your soft spot. Even though it was so cute to watch them love you so much at this age, I found myself really looking forward to when you are big enough to actually play with them.

Your Grammy loved you from the minute she saw you. I will never know why, but she loved to watch as we changed your diaper. On her last night with us she made sure to whisper a secret to you that none of us could hear. I'm sure she'll tell you lots of secrets over the course of your life when she says goodbye.

Grandpa Scott got to meet you too. He told your dad that even though babies are super cute when they are newborns, that they become really fun for dads once they are old enough to be tossed around a bit. I'm sure that's true, but I already grieve the fact that you're not a teeny tiny newborn anymore.

During their trip we mostly spent time in the hotel room. You managed to poop all over Grandpa, but none of us know how exactly that happened as the pooping seemed to occur while you were in your car seat. Some how you managed to break the laws of physics before you were even two weeks old. Among some of your adventures was a trip to Plymouth Rock, McDonalds, and a diaper change on a gas station bathroom floor. Everyone was very impressed with the amount and frequency to which you eat.

The day after Grammy and Grandpa Scott left was the day that your Nana and Grandpa Paul finally got to meet you. When they first walked into our apartment they both pretty much forgot to say 'hi' to me and went immediatley after you. They were positively enamoured with you from the minute they held you. Both of them remarked how different you looked in real life than you do in pictures, and how tiny you were. When they first arrived you were pretty wide awake alert, and were perfectly content to let them shower you with kisses and squeezes for about an hour before it all became too much and you fell asleep. Grandpa spent a lot of time taking pictures of you, which I will post on here shortly.

Nana LOVED getting to hold you, and struggled a bit to share you. All week long she was perfectly happy to sit in our living room and just hold you for hours. She was so excited to see you each morning and sad to say goodbye each night. Speaking of goodbye...watching Nana and Grandpa (but especially Nana) say goodbye to you the morning they flew back to Idaho was basically the worst thing I've ever seen. Nana cried and cried and didn't want to let you go. Even though she knows she'll see you a lot, she knew that she would never get to see the 3 week old that she had gotten to know so well ever again. That's the thing about babies and living far away from family...every time you see them again they are like whole other people.

We were able to leave the apartment occassionally while they were here, but seriously the heat was brutal and so it was best to just huddle around inside. Of course the day they left the heat wave broke and the weather was amazing.

Fortunately you will get to see Nana and Grandpa over Labor Day when I take you back to Idaho (and hopefully you and I will survive the trip to tell about it). Then Grammy is coming back out again in September for a short weekend so she can see you. Then Nana and Grandpa are coming back again in October...so you're getting plenty of grandparent time in.

Even though it's heart breaking to watch all the goodbyes, it makes my heart swell to know that there are so many people in your little life who love you enough to be so sad. Hopefully one day we can all live a little closer so that these hard goodbyes don't have to happen so often.

Your Birth Story

This post has been a long time coming, but as you can imagine it's been hard for me to find the time to write much these last couple of weeks. Before you were born, I often wondered just what it was that kept new parents so busy all of the time. In my mind, I just figured newborns slept and ate all day, and I couldn't figure out how or why new parents couldn't be more productive.

That's the first in a long line of assumptions I made before you that have been completely blown out of the water. Turns out, being a new parent is far more time consuming than I ever imagined, and I am now one of those people that actually struggles to get out of the house at all, let alone on time. But more on that in a later post.

For now, I just wanted to tell you the story about how you came to this Earth. Every year on my birthday Nana tells me the story about how I was born. Even though I've heard it nearly 30 times, it never gets old hearing about the day I made her a mother. So I'm sure you'll hear your own birth story several times over the course of your life too, but I feel the need to memorialize it in writing nonetheless for my own record keeping purposes.

You were due on June 23, 2013. As we approached your due date, there was virtually no evidence that either you or I were ready to go. I kept telling my doctor that I worried natural labor wasn't in the cards for me, but he said he had no reason to believe that I wouldn't go into labor naturally on my own or that I wouldn't be able to deliver you naturally.

Well your due date came and went, you still had not dropped, and my body still hadn't progressed at all in the way that it was supposed to in order to indicate that you were on your way. These days doctors don't like to let women go past 41 weeks of pregnancy because it can cause complications for moms and babies, so we scheduled an induction date for July 1st, 2013. The doctor told me that he thought there was still a good chance that I would go into labor on my own before that day however. This did not happen, clearly.

So on July 1st we drove to the hospital for our 6:00 AM appointment. I believe that it's more nerve wracking knowing the exact time you're going to go into labor, rather than just letting it happen spontaneously. Both your dad and I were pretty nervous that morning.

We arrived at the hospital and they immediately took us into a little room that was all set up for a labor and delivery. There was a hospital bed, and more importantly there was a little bed already to go with stuff for you, including a tiny hat, a tiny diaper, and a bunch of monitors. Within minutes of me getting into my hospital gown, one of the nurses started poking and prodding around my arm for my vein so she could insert a port. Well she struggled finding the vein and apparently that was too much for my already nervous self to handle, and I just about fainted right there on the hospital bed. The nurses quickly got me some water and a cool towel and waited until the color returned to my face before proceeding to find the vein in my other arm. Obviously my nearly fainting at a mere needle poking gave everyone the wrong impression of me. They assumed that given my weakness in that regard, I would never survive labor. They were right.

They started me on the all the bells and whistles in their arsenal to start the labor process. Without going into too much detail, the mechanical devices they used were painful and entirely uneffective. My body was still not progressing at all.

Surprisingly to everyone, we ended up spending the night in that room because nothing had happened. I wasn't far enough along to start the pitocin, so we needed to wait it out until the next day to start over. So your dad and I spent the night in the labor and delivery room, which meant that your dad slept essentially on a slab of concrete. And by "slept" I mean he laid awake all night long stressing about things...as did I.

The next day even though I still had not progressed much, they decided to start me on the pitocin anyway. Within a few hours I started to feel intense contractions about every 60 seconds. I'm not sure what I imagined labor contractions to feel like, but I admit that deep down I thought I could handle the pain. But let me tell you, when they come on that strong and there's hardly any time in between, there's just about nothing more painful that I can imagine. After about 3 hours of intense contractions I had had my fill of fun and asked for an epidural. Unfortunately for me I STILL wasn't progressed far enough for them to give me an epidural, and I was told I had to wait a little longer. Finally about an hour later one of the doctors came into the room and observed me contracting, and despite my body not being ready for an epidural the doctor made the merciful decision that I was indeed ready for the epidural.

Once I got the epidural things eased up quite a bit, but unfortunately despite my body have perfect and strong contractions, I still wasn't anywhere near ready to deliver you. At that point everyone had had it with this process. The doctors and nurses didn't have any other alternatives to get labor started, and my body (and my spirit) were completely wiped out. No matter what anyone did, it just appeared that this was not going to happen on its own. Finally finally finally the doctor made the determination 37 hours into this process that a c-section was necessary. At any other time in my life a c-section would have been a scary proposition, but at that point I couldn't imagine a more welcome announcement.

Within minutes of the decision being made to take you out by c-section I was being poked and prodded and prepped for surgery. They wheeled me down to the delivery room and told your dad to stay put and dress down into his scrubs.

A few minutes after that I was prepped and ready to go and they finally brought your dad in to sit next to me. And then as quickly as that, we were within minutes of finally meeting you.

It's funny the things you remember, and the things you forget. Part of why I want to write this story is that there are just some things about those moments on the evening of July 2nd that I never want to forget. I worry that if I don't memorialize things now, I will forget many of them because I was in such a drug induced stupor at the time.

One of the most poignant memories I have of that night was just seconds before you were born. I was lying down behind a big blue sheet, and despite there being no less than 20 people in the room at the time, including your dad, I felt remarkably alone. The surgeon was talking to the residents about what she was doing, the anesthesiologists were busy monitoring their machines and communicating with one another, and the nurses were busy doing their own thing. Even your dad was somewhere in his own world. But what I want to always remember is that within seconds of you being born, one of the nurses who had paid such special attention to me the last two days and whom I cared very much for, reached out and held my hand as I became a mother for the first time. She looked intently in my eyes and squeezed me tight, and then I heard your cry. It was one of the most humane, mother-to-mother experiences I could imagine, and still makes my eyes a little watery when I think about it.

The other thing I want to remember is your cry. It was so loud and so focused. Everyone in the room gasped collectively because you were "so huge!" (the surgeon predicted you would be 10 pounds). The anesthesiolgist leaned over me and told me that I was his hero after seeing the size of the child I just birthed. Of course, I couldn't see you at this time, I could only hear you, but after everyone's reaction I was left wondering if I had just delivered a circus freak of some sort. Finally they called over your dad to cut the umbilical cord, yet I still hadn't seen you. Your dad eventually came over to me and told me that you had lots of dark hair, and that he thought you looked like me. But I still couldn't see you. The whole time I just kept worrying that you were 15 pounds or something. When it was announced that you were only 8 lbs 4 oz, I could tell everyone else was disappointed but I felt immense relief for some reason. The reason everyone thought you were so huge was because you were really long--22 inches.

FINALLY, after what seemed like hours but was probably only 5 minutes your dad brought you over to me and I got to see you for the first time...even though I couldn't hold you. I want to remember your dark, deep eyes. I want to remember how calm you were once you were wrapped up. I want to remember how you were rooting around to eat something, and how I felt this instinctive urge to feed you but I couldn't because I was strapped to a table with my abdomen being sewn up.

Eventually they sent your dad to the recovery room while they finished up with me. I was shaking almost uncontrollably at the time, which they said was a result of the adrenaline and drugs. It was still about another hour or so before they wheeled me to the recovery room and I got to hold you for the very first time. I can't really describe that moment here, but I do hope that I can remember it forever. It was probably the most special moment of my life. Actually, it was definitely the most special moment of my life, and the most surreal.

Your dad had already sent a text message to all of our family with your picture announcing your birth. Grandpa Paul had been going crazy with anticipation for the last two days and was about to lose his mind. Ironically, the picture went through to everyone's phone but his, and I'm pretty sure that his head exploded at that point.

And then after a couple of hours, we were taken to our room where I recovered for the next four days, and we worked on getting to know you.

That next day I was informed that I have a faulty uterus and that I probably will never be able to delivery a child naturally. The doctors who told me that did so as compassionately as possible, apparently believing that not being able to delivery naturally would make me feel like less of a woman or something. She obviously didn't know who she was talking too. Frankly, I got a taste of labor and have no need to do that ever again. Plus, now I get to schedule my subsequent deliveries of your future sibling(s) which very much appeals to my need to control my life...which is especially important to me now that you have single handidly eliminated my ability control anything about my life.

It was a steep learning curve in the hospital (we're still on that curve), but thanks to a couple of extremely competent nurses who were life savers, we were able to get a lot of things figured out with you. We had a lot of really frusterating moments, but far more wonderful moments. In fact, I think really fondly on the time our family spent in that little hospital room. It was a very intimate, meaningful time for us.

And that's the story of how you came to be. Even though it was less than a month ago, that time in the hospital feels years and years behind us. It's true what they say, that once you have a baby it's hard to imagine what life was like before.

Even though life was a little easier and a lot less messy before, I am a pretty big fan of our little family of three and wouldn't send you back for the world (even though I threaten to do so often at night when you want to eat for the 18th time).

We love you.

Welcome Maxwell Scott

You were born on Tuesday July 2nd, 2013 at 7:26 PM. You were delivered via c-section after 37.5 hours of unsuccessful labor induction. The doctors made the final call at about 6:00 to get you on out, as apparently my body was unwilling to let go of you.

We absolutely adore you and it has been torture not to be able to share you with family, specifically your grandparents. A lot of people are dying to meet you, and thankfully that will begin to happen this week with the arrival of Grammy and Grandpa Scott. Aunt Shay and your cousins will come shortly thereafter, and then Nana and Grandpa Paul will be here the week after that. If I were you I would worry about meeting Grandpa Paul because I kind of think he might squeeze you too much and never let you go. I actually even wonder if he won't try to baby-nap you.

You are the cutest thing I have ever seen. You definitely resemble my side of the family, but you undoubtedly are built like your dad. We are still trying to get to know each other, and each day you teach us something new and force us to go back to the drawing table and develop new strategies as to how to feed you and get you to sleep. You are very affectionate, opinionated, and lovely in every sense of the word. We love you more than you'll ever know.

Below are some home videos we took during your first week. 

Four Days Past Due and Still Waiting...

You are four days overdue. We went to the doctor this morning and he said that there is still virtually no evidence that you are motivated to come out anytime soon. Thus you’ve left us with no choice…we’ll be taking you by force on July 1^st. We never wanted it to go down this way, but you are turning out to be one stubborn little boy. That, or you inherited your mother’s inability to navigate direction and you can’t tell which way is up and which way is down. If it’s the latter, I feel bad for giving you such a hard time because you are in for a lifetime of being completely lost, even with a GPS. Regardless, it looks like you will probably be born in July. I hope you’re cool with a ruby birthstone and the astrological sign of Cancer.

They have scheduled an induction for 6:00 AM on July 1^st. The doctor said that just because we induce on that day, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be born on the 1^st. For all we know you may be able to ride this gravy train for another two days after the induction. When I asked your dad if he was at all sad or concerned about spending potentially several days in the hospital, he responded that his primary concern was that he would run out of snacks. So we’re going to the grocery store this weekend to make sure that your dad has plenty to eat while my body is being poked, prodded, and pumped full of chemicals designed specifically to bring on excruciating pain as quickly and intensely as possible.  We wouldn’t want him to be at all uncomfortable during that process.

We got another ultrasound on Monday, and they estimated that as of then you were nine pounds, one ounce. They project you will probably put on another half-pound before you’re born, so that will be fun…for the both of us. I was one week late and nine pounds, 8 ounces, so it looks like you’re already taking after me in so many ways.

It’s kind of exhausting to wake up each morning with the thought of “will my life change forever today?” and to end each night with thoughts of “will my life change forever tomorrow?”  All told though, our stress levels are relatively intact given the very real fact that one way or another, very soon, our lives are indeed going to change forever. Actually, I think your dad is more stressed than he leads onto, but that stress has manifested itself through an ongoing war that he was waged with the cockroaches in our apartment.

Our new apartment has a bit of a cockroach problem. We had the exterminators come in, but they didn’t do much other than lay a bunch of traps on the floors. So your dad has spent hours upon hours on his hands and knees plugging every hole and crevice that he can see. He has sealed off all the doors and rinses out the drains nightly. And while the problem has certainly decipated, every time he sees one of those roaches (which is still about once a day) his eyes begin to twitch and he goes a little bit crazy. He spends a great deal of time reading up on roach psychology online, and is inventing his own patented roach poison in lab…which despite his protests I will NOT be allowing in our house, but kudos to him for trying I guess. At night he dreams about roaches, and gets up several times to see if there are any on the floor. I always know when he sees one because I hear what sounds like a fist fight with a bear followed by a diatribe of words you will never be allowed to say. Not to be too psychoanalytical or anything, but I kind of think that your dad feels like if he can control the roaches, that will make up for the loss of control he feels with this whole “you being born” thing.

Anyway, we are ready for you to come. The second my due date passed, I got the distinct impression that I make people uncomfortable. Your dad likened it to a Jack in the Box toy. Everyone is on edge as the handle cranks and the little tune continues to play “all around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…” because at any given point, the box will explode when the weasel pops. The problem is that nobody knows when that weasel is going to pop, so all they can hope for is that it won't be on their shoes. 

Be born.

Come. Out. Now.

Okay, party’s over. Come out now. Come out come out come out come out come out. I know that you don’t have to officially be out for another four days, but I think we both know that the time has come for you to leave. And I think we also both know that you have no intention of leaving on your eviction date whatsoever. I went to the doctor this morning and he basically said that I am the least progressed a woman can possibly be at 39.5 weeks pregnant. My theory is that you are going to begin consuming me from the inside out until you are in complete possession of my body. I will slowly cease to exist, and fade darkly into the deep recesses of my conscious, while you gradually take over my entire being and devour my soul for nourishment. Since you are still my son I won’t go as far as to call you an actual demon per se, but I probably would classify you as a parasitic sea monster.

Your dad thinks that your reluctance to come out has more to do with generalized anxiety about the process of birth, as opposed to my sea monster theory. Like maybe you’re claustrophobic or something and have a fear of being squeezed for up to 15 hours just to be born and then immediately circumcised after that. Admittedly, I can’t imagine your birthday will be much fun, but trust me when I tell you that you’ll be happy once you just decide to take the plunge. Plus, it’s not like you’ll remember any of it. It will actually be me who is left with all the emotional and physical scarring.

As a way to incentivize you to hurry this along, I will list some of the things that you can look forward to once you are finally born.

Grandparents: you, Son, are going to be bombarded with grandparents once you finally get here. You’ll get this figured out in your own good time, but I’ll go ahead and fill you in on the well-known secret anyway: Grandparents are like, the best part of being alive. While your parents will work hard to teach you good habits and not to spoil you and to restrict your sugar intake, your grandparents will be there to undo all of that progress and give you everything you want. If you will just be born already, I have it on good authority that you have four grandparents who are scheduled to come to Boston and start the spoiling process immediately upon their arrival. I’m sure you’re nice and cozy in that little womb hot tub of yours, but I can guarantee you that it won’t compare to the arms of me, Dad, and all of these grandparents who will refuse to put you down for the first two weeks of your life.

Presents: you have already been given so many toys and clothes and gadgets that are just waiting for you to come and make good use of them. For instance, you have a Sophie the Giraffe, which is your first official status symbol and already makes you a really popular baby. You have books, rattles, teething toys, and even an outfit from Paris that is all yours to have a blow-out in. You have a pristine nursery with freshly washed bedding and drawers full of neatly folded clothes. You even have a turtle diaper stacker. Did you read that right? A turtle diaper stacker!! Let’s face it, while I’m sure it’s a cushy life inside my uterus, I know for a fact that you aren’t getting any presents in there. Don’t you want all your presents? Good, then be born already.

Outside: right now it’s June 20th. The weather is amazing. I figure at this point we have a solid 14 weeks left of sunny, warm days full of long walks, hanging out in the park, and turkey sandwiches (the sandwiches are for me). But each day you procrastinate the inevitable, is another perfect summer day gone to waste, and another turkey sandwich I can’t eat because whoever banned cold cuts for pregnant women is pure evil. Trust me when I tell you that there is nothing better than this city in this summertime. Since I’ll be on maternity leave, you and I will spend all summer living it up. I’ll show you flowers, birds, grass, clouds, the sun…and the list goes on and on. Right now I assume things are pretty much just black and gurgly in there. But the sooner you come out the sooner we can go play, and eat some sandwiches. Plus we will take you to Frog Pond and let you dip your little toes in the pool. You’ll love that.

Are you convinced yet? Have you decided that 24 hours of stress is worth a lifetime of grandparents, presents and being outside? No? You aren’t convinced? Okay well how’s this: if you don’t come out soon I will literally smoke you out with a match.

Nine Months!

As promised, here is our official 9 month (!!) bump picture—better late than never. This picture was taken in our new apartment, which, after all of my whining turns out to not be so bad after all. In fact we like it a little better than our old one, minus all the pollen that blows in several times a day.

As of today, we have 18 days left until your due date. While I am determined to try and fully relax and just enjoy these last few weeks before you come, I can’t help but be a little hopeful that you’ll come sooner than later because we just found out that you are packing on the pounds almost as rapidly as me.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we had to go in for an ultrasound today because during the “Incident” last week it was discovered my amniotic fluid levels were high. The doctor said she wasn’t worried about it, but wanted us to get it checked out just in case. Despite the doctor’s reassurances, I did nothing but worry about it for the last week and did the thing expectant parents are not supposed to do—I Googled the condition incessantly and worried myself sick over all the possible things that could go wrong.  Apparently high levels of fluid can be associated with all sorts of birth defects and health concerns for babies, in addition to increased fetal size.

Well today we learned that while my fluid levels are indeed high, they are not outside of the normal range, which is a good thing. They checked your organs and your bones and all looks well. And then they measured you. You are supposed to be 6 and 1/3 pounds right now…but you are already measuring in at a solid 7 pounds, 13 ounces.  The doctor estimated you will certainly put on another pound, plus a possible extra 15%...putting you—potentially—at around 10 pounds on your due date. Bottom line is I really really need for you to only gain one more pound (if that, even) before you come. Don’t be a 10 pound baby. Don’t do that to your mom. I have been so good to you for all these months, letting you live inside of me rent-free with a constant supply of food and heat. I mean, it’s not like I can withhold your security deposit or anything. This relationship is pretty much founded on good faith in which I have no recourse if you leave my body destroyed. I am trusting you to do the right thing here, and just be a normal sized baby.

Your massiveness aside, it’s nice to be reassured that all still looks well with you. We’ve had a few scares this pregnancy, which have really just been more annoying inconveniences than anything. Even though your dad and I are grateful for the opportunity to deliver at such a large and highly accredited hospital, we do think that the advanced medical knowledge has caused more trouble than it has really been worth. Doctors are so trained to look for every little thing that might not be exactly right, and then feel legally obligated to alert patients to the 1 in 10,000 chance that there is something drastically wrong with their baby. I am all about having access to information, but there comes a point when too much information becomes a bad thing…and then add our addiction to online forums on top of everything else and you end up with a far more stressful pregnancy than necessary.   

I will say however, that I know personally some people who haven't been as lucky as us and who have had children with some health problems. I try to be sensitive to the fact that each time we've been relieved with good news, there's someone else out there who is not so lucky. Moreover, even though we keep getting good news, there's no guarantee with these things and we really just have to wait it out. And then I remind myself that even if something was wrong, the end result doesn't change. We love you and want to meet you and even though everyone always hopes for a healthy baby, just because a baby might not be 100% healthy, it doesn't mean that he's not perfect.

Now that we have this last little episode behind us, I am looking forward to these next couple of weeks of rest and relaxation. We are all moved into our new apartment, your nursery is set up, and most of the loose ends are taken care of at work. Now I guess we just wait.

Our Memorial Day Misadventure

I realize I am behind on posting a 9 month bump photo. I will try to get to that tonight, but with all the moving and rearranging and misbehaving on your part (we'll get to that shortly) it's been hard to find time to take a lot of pictures.

But we are at nine months nonetheless. The doctor said that if I were to go into labor at this point there would be no stopping either of us. This is usually the part where I rehash what we are up to, what you are up to, and how excited we are for you to get here, etc. But given recent events, I feel I need to address some things instead. Now that we’ve both had time to reflect on what you did last Monday (Memorial Day), I would like to process your behavior and troubleshoot ways we can avoid that kind of acting out in the future.  In case you forgot, here is a recap of our little adventure:

(warning: this text below might invoke unseemly images in the minds of the reader)

Your dad and I had just returned from a very pleasant evening walk to the Public Gardens and back. Upon returning to the apartment, your dad went to the kitchen to retrieve a Cherry Coke, and I went to the bathroom to wash my hands. While washing my hands, there was an immense surge of water that gushed out of my body and all over the floor. I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, completely stunned. My first thought was “did I just urinate all over myself?” But upon further reflection, I realized that couldn’t have been it since I didn’t have a full bladder, and more importantly, being a relatively experienced urinator in my life, what happened felt nothing like anything that had ever happened before.

I immediately sat on the toilet (pants still on) only to experience a second large gush of water descend from my body. At this point I managed to gather my wits about myself enough to call out to your dad for help. Dad rushed to the bathroom only to find me on the toilet, with my pants completely saturated. I told him that I thought my water just broke.

Now, before I go on, a little background context might be useful here. First of all, you were only 36 weeks gestation at that time, which means that if you were on your way you’d technically be premature. Even though you would be perfectly fine in the long run had that been the case, you still really needed a few more weeks to bake. Additionally, all of our stuff had already been packed, including all of your baby gear, since we were moving the next weekend. None of your clothes had been washed, we hadn’t installed the car seat, your cradle wasn’t finished, and we didn’t have much in the way of diapers. Also, it would technically be illegal for us to bring you home to our current apartment since it has lead paint. And finally, I WAS NOT READY FOR YOU YET.

Your dad found the phone number to Tufts and had me call the doctor-on-call so I could describe what happened. I spoke to the doctor and told her that I was 36 weeks along, and that I think my water just broke. She told me we had to pack our hospital bag and come to the hospital as soon as possible, because if my water had indeed broken, we would need to induce labor that night. I told her we’d be right over and I hung up.

Then I started to sob uncontrollably while still sitting on the toilet. I was startled, and I was genuinely scared, and I was truly unprepared for this. I had just gone to the doctor four days prior and he said that labor was nowhere on the horizon. How could this be happening? Your dad, bless his heart, did everything he could do to soothe me, while also trying to get things in order for us to leave. He calmly found a book with a checklist of things we’ll need to pack and began to open up boxes searching for various items. As he packed the cameras and the change of clothes and your little going home outfit and our insurance information, I just stood in the middle of the bedroom paralyzed by the decision of whether or not I should take out my contacts or leave them in. In the end, the only contribution I made to the hospital bag was a package of 20 elastic hairbands.

15 minutes later we grabbed your car seat, the hospital bag and my purse and headed towards the hospital. While Dad maneuvered through Red Sox traffic in downtown Boston, I just rambled on like a crazy person. I bounced from topic to topic, like how I had an important meeting that next day that I couldn’t miss, to how much I was looking forward to a sub sandwich after I delivered you since Tufts is pretty close to my favorite deli.

We got to the hospital and they immediately ushered me into the exam room. They performed a non-stress test on you to monitor your heart rate (which was strong as usual). They asked me a series of questions about what happened, the history of my pregnancy, whether I was still leaking fluid, and then performed an internal exam. And then they performed an ultrasound.

Now, prior to the ultrasound and during this whole debacle I had actually felt bad for you. On the drive to the hospital you were more active than you typically are for that time of night, and I envisioned you frantically flopping about looking for your lost amniotic fluid—like a goldfish that had jumped out of its bowl.

But once we saw you on the monitor, it became abundantly clear to me that you were in no distress whatsoever. In fact, you clearly seemed quite pleased with yourself. Not only was there ample fluid in my womb, but there was actually a slight excess. She said there was no way my water broke given how much fluid I had, and how active my baby was. You were practically dancing on screen.  It wasn’t until you quite literally opened your little hand and WAIVED AT THE CAMERA that it dawned on me that this whole thing was a ploy to get attention. It’s as though you were bored and schemed a way to rush to the hospital just to get your picture taken.

And why did I think that? Because the final diagnosis was that you head-butted my bladder and made it explode all over the bathroom. My water did not break. I did, indeed, just uncontrollably urinate all over myself.

And it was at that moment that I saw your dad practically melt on to the floor in relief (and probably a little bit of embarrassment). It turns out he was a little more stressed than he had lead on to during the whole ordeal, and the physical release of that stress on his part was palpable.

After attempting to regain some semblance of pride (I couldn’t), I asked the doctor if there was anything I could do to prevent this from happening again, and she said that unfortunately, no, there is nothing that can be done since some babies just do this for fun. Her only practical medical advice was to bring an extra pair of pants with me to work in the event that you have your way with me there.  And then they sent us home.

It was a long drive home, as your dad needed to remind me about every 41 seconds that I had wet myself. Epically so. I knew right then that I would never live this down. We returned home with no baby, a big mess to clean up, and a warm bottle of Cherry Coke. I fell asleep shortly thereafter out of pure exhaustion, but your dad stayed up for several hours because he was pretty wired and couldn’t relax. You really did a number on your parents that night.

So, let’s discuss how we can ensure that this will never happen again. Look, I get that it’s boring in there. It’s dark and cramped, and I’m sure you’re getting tired of the menu. Just know that your time is almost up and then you’ll be introduced to this world and all of its glory (again, don’t get your hopes up about your new apartment though).  However, in the meantime, rather than taking out your angst on my bladder, why don’t you play with your umbilical cord? I hear that babies do that from time to time. How about rather than head butt things, you use your head to think about ways you can be nice to your mom, especially considering what she will have to undergo in order to get you out in a short few weeks. Keep in mind that if you make my bladder explode at work, I will obviously have to quit out of pure humiliation, which means we will have no money to buy you fun things after you’re born. The bottom line is that from here on out you probably should just keep your hands to yourself. Hopefully I have given you some things to think about and this won’t become an issue.

One unfortunate thing that did come out of our little misadventure was that I apparently have high levels of amniotic fluid, which might be indicative of a problem with you--or it might be indicative of nothing at all. Tomorrow we have to go get another ultrasound to remeasure everything and see if things are okay. We're trying not to stress too much about it, but it's never fun to think that things might not be okay...especially this late in the game. I'll keep you posted.