Our amazing little miracle has arrived. He was born on July 19th. We've been married for 15 years in October and were beginning to think this part of life would never happen for us. We'd both come to the point over the last few years where we had finally decided that it was most likely not going to happen. We never really talked about doing any kind of fertility treatments and bandied about a few discussions on adoption though never enough to follow through with research and the like. We were satisfied being Aunt and Uncle and while wishing a child of our own would come into the picture were growing less and less broken hearted that it hadn't happened yet. We had settled into a life of free schedules and picking up at the spur of a moment to do anything we wanted.
I spent about 12 hours in labor. Then after all that work and no progress we ended up a c-section. Things were going well with me and the baby, both dealing with the labor process really well with no signs of stress. After the Dr. gave us a few "let's give it another hour and see where you are at the end of that." I figured it was time to throw in the towel and quit hoping that nature would take it's course and make my body do what it needed to do. Why risk a possibility of the baby or myself going into some kind of distress or something happening when we were still both doing so well.
Val was born at 8:38 pm on July 19th. He was 7 pounds 10 ounces. To say that we were beyond happy is an understatement. We listened while he screamed and cried from the minute he was taken from the womb. He wasn't happy being removed from his nice cozy resting place into the harsh world outside. The dr. announced his arrival with Val crying right before. The Dr said " He's here! BOY does he have BIG feet!" Of course in my drugged up state all I could visualize was a baby with giant clown feet. So we sat and waited for our chance to meet our little guy, we could hear the nurses going through the checks, Val voicing his displeasure all the while. They swaddled him and brought him around the curtain still fussing and placed him into Patrick's arms. Both of us in tears, Patrick greeted Val with a "Hey buddy" and Val went silent and just blinked back in wonder at his dad. He was so amazingly cute and wide eyed.
The most disappointing thing about c-section is the fact that they strap you into a crucifix position on the table. Both arms stretched out and tied down. So while I could stare in wonder at the little guy I couldn't reach out to touch him or hold him. Thankfully the hospital has a rule that the only people who can hold the baby while mom recovers is dad.
Off Patrick goes, holding our little man and taking him down to the nursery. I was left being stitched up and sorted, then taken off to recovery for an hour. The worst was the horrible bout of shaking. It started after they started getting me ready for the c-section and continued for almost an hour after the surgery. I have to say, with all my fears of the c-section, it wasn't as bad as I had imagined. Yes, it's major surgery, but it was a lot milder than my ovarian surgery. The bad thing was that I had picked up a cold from Patrick the week of my induction. Poor Patrick was sick all the week that Val and I were in the hospital. Coughing and an abdominal incision do not mix.
