Superkid's Birth Story

Tomorrow is Superkid's 5th birthday. I thought I'd start the story today so I don't stay on the computer much at all on his special day. Today we are going shopping for a watermelon and macaroni and cheese to have with BBQ chicken sandwiches for dinner, his favorite things.
I always make the kids favorite dinner on their birthdays and they get to pick out a junk food cereal for thier breakfast.
Rick and I had two beautiful girls. I had always pictured myself having a boy first, I don't know really why, you know how those girly things go. We wanted another baby and were sure it would be another girl. I was of course okay with that, especially because I thought I'd be having five kids, not just three. God had different plans!
We found out in mid September of 2002 that we were expecting, and we were elated! However, life kinda goes on and I was very busy caring for a four year old, and near two year old on top of all day long nausea so I don't remember much until half way when IT happened.
We took off on a big trip to see Rick's folks. I was about 18 weeks along. We had so much stuff to carry. When we got to the airport we had to hurry to our ramp for some reason that I don't remember. He had Princess plus luggage, plus car seat.... I had Lilo, plus luggage, plus car seat. I remember feeling like I was over doing it but I kept thinking I was only half way so nothing could really happen. I was beyond where it could go wrong, and not yet to where he could come.....right?
Well, we got up there and things went fine but I did become rather homesick and went through some real emotional stress. My in laws are very quiet people and my kids have never been quiet playing children. It was Christmas and all children, well, MY children, get really hyper around Christmas (not to mention it was both their birthday's!). Anyway, I started to feel what I thought was the baby pushing really hard against the sides of my belly . I had been feeling him for a while so I just thought that he was big (and he was, but). We went to see "The Two Towers" in the theater while there and I remember him wiggling around so much to the sounds of the movie, especially the wings of the nasgul. Then, the same scene back home: bags, girls, car seats...
When I got home I was feeling the pushing more and more and in patterns. I remember I sat down in my glider rocker one afternoon and just paid attention. It scared me. I called my friend Charlotte who had been on bed rest (I had been put on bed rest with Lilo to but only for about two weeks until I hit 34 weeks and then they just let me up, it was for early laboring) for a long time. I described to her what I was feeling. She said they did sound like contractions. No way! I was only 20 weeks!
We went to the hospital. I was contracting, and I was dilated to 2cm! I was put down and told to stay down for three months. My church family and MOPS group jumped right up to help. Oh, they were so gracious! The girls were on a rotation of going to a different friend each day of the week. Rick had to get them up early every morning and take them off to someones house and pick them up after work to bring them home. We had food brought every other night. We had friends come clean up the house for us. It was hard but amazing. I most of all missed out on my baby, Lilo, learning to talk. She said near to nothing before this but because of her need to tell people what she needed, she started talking.
I had to have an emergency ultrasound upon going into labor. They started it up and were happy to see that my inside report was good. Baby was great. The doctor said "Do you want to find out what the baby is?" We had all ready decided that we would, since we had never had it done with the girls and I wanted to know if I could buy boy stuff or not. "Well, he said, what do you have?" We told him we had two girls. "Well," he said, (and I thought for sure by his tone that we were having another one) "it looks like you girls will have a little brother to play with!". Immediately Rick sprung out of his seat and present me with high five. My mom was there too and on the walk to the car she got on her cell and called Dad to tell him the "Well, guess what!" news. It's a memory I'll never forget.
I finally reached the end of my bed rest, after many books, Martha Stewart shows, Pride and Prejudice watches, crocheting, and note writing moments. I continued to labor the whole time off and on. I was on Tributiline for months (that stuff is awful... you are told to lay down all the time but it makes you feel like you have drank ten cups of coffee). When I got up I was still contracting. It was so hard to know when the baby was going to come. We had three false runs to the hospital. I mean these hurt, bad, and would come in three min intervals and I would get all the way to the hospital, get hooked up and they would start to die down. Finally I was about 12 days from due date and worn out from all the labor. Superkid (Rick and I alone knew his name) was really big by this time. Oh, and the other thing the ultrasound told us at 20 weeks as the doctor put it "This baby has extremely long femur bones!". This was before he said it was a boy and I thought "oh, my, am I going to have an extremely tall girl?!" Anyway... she said I could come on in the next day and she would break my water.
The most ironic thing about being on bed rest that I hear from many women is that when the baby needs to come, you have to be induced. That was the case here. I was even put on pitocin. That was the bad part. They were supposed to be really careful because I was a double V-back (meaning, for those who don't know, I had a c-section with Princess and a natural birth with Lilo). Instead, they did not pay attention and I was given too much. It is a miracle I did not rupture. I was at 3 cm for hours. All of a sudden I told the nurse I was feeling a lot of pressure. I had my epidural and I was still feeling it. She said, no, there was no way. I shut up but not for long. No, something was going on. I asked them to check. I had jumped from 3 to 10 in about a half hour! Basically Superkid had been slammed into the birth canal because of the high dose of pitocin (the one nurse I did not like was in control of my drip lines, she also forgot to re-set my epidural and it ran out by the time I was actually giving birth). He was sideways. His shoulders were vertical. OUCH! Especially with no epi, I felt them more than I did his head. He does have broad shoulders too. It took three hours to push, he got stuck. The room was full of people. My mom got scared (my brother had a stroke in birth from the same thing and he has Cerebral Palsy because of the lack of oxygen so you can see why she was scared. I think it was like re-living out her own scary story. Now days, they make you stop and breathe through every third contraction and even though the birth was traumatic on my body, his oxygen levels were great and he was fine). They finally used a vacuum for a few minutes and he was out.
I had nearly gone into shock though the pushing and was shaking uncontrollably. I was just glad he was okay.
And that is how Superkid came into this world. Long arms, long torso, long legs, long feet. His first word was "ball" and mommy bought him a little basketball. Who knows!
Tomorrow I'll talk more about
who little Superkid is as of five.