Tuesday, June 21, 2011

First Month.....

Wow so many thoughts to post about and obviously so little time. First things first, I never thought i could care this much about somebody/something ever. When she cries all i can think is "what can i do to make it better" and then i run around and try everything until she passes out from crying.

I cant imagine a better mom than Lindy is being. I mean she is on it and is a natural.

Now before i go any further, if you are a peer of mine considering trying to have a kid.....



HOLY SHIT IS THIS HARD!

I know, I know you hear it all the time "oh its so hard and so rewarding"....So far, first month, and really even the 10 months of pregnancy preceding this, not worth it, not even close. It is so hard to explain, like no doubt i love this kid and would do anything to make it better for her, lindy, and myself. At the same time I am having this fear that all those parents who say shit like "oh its so rewarding and worth it and i cant imagine life without kids" are just saying that to keep their sanity after making such a horrible decision.

Katie cries, sleeps, shits, and eats. When shes happy and content and not colicky i worry that shes dead. Literally i check her breathing at least 50x a day. I have had at least two instances where i convince myself shes not breathing and i pick her up and start patting her back and yelling out that shes not breathing until shes wide awake and throwing a fit.

Then when shes crying Lindy and I get on edge and run around like two crazies trying to calm her down.....

The financial side of it is ridiculously bad. 15 diapers a day, clothes, furniture....thank god were not using formula.....and all this for what? What am i getting out of this? I know, I know i keep hearing after 3 months it gets better etc etc and i really hope thats true, because the constant pressure of worrying about earning enough  money, calming her when shes irritable (which is like 80% of the day), and then worrying that shes dead when shes calm  the other 20% of the day is the opposite of rewarding.

Obviously i cant help but love Katie and shes pushing me to want to do better things for her and Lindy, but after my whole life wanting a huge family, i think this is it for us.....mayyyyyyyyyyyyybe one more but the scars of this catastrophe will have to fade first.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

FINALLY!!!!

This was Lindy's last stand as a pregnant chick and holy shit are we both glad its over. So yeah we had to get induced because Katie was just way too comfy to come out on her own. We woke up bright and early and called the triage to reserve our birthing room. It was a LONG day (14 hours of labor) and we were a bit upset about the way things went down with the hospital.

We had wanted things to be as natural as possible, and yes it is partly our fault that things were not natural since we decided to induce, but we still naively thought we could stick to the no epidural/no c section goals that we had. The main thing that really pissed lindy and me off was when Lindy was in a lot of pain (from the pitocin and labor) and got up to move around and the baby heart monitor moved so the baby heart rate wasnt registering on the machine. Two doctors come rushing in and instead of trying to assess the situation they start telling us that they are going to put this little thing into our baby's head that will more accurately measure her heart rate bla bla bla. Well i speak up and say no, her heart rate is weak b/c this thing moved, and i get the heart rate monitor repositioned and Katie's heart rate is fine. Then after 11 hours Lindy just cant take the pain anymore and opts for an epidural. When she is shifting around again the heart  rate monitor moves again and 3 doctors and 3 nurses burst in the room and do the same thing as before, except this time we were just too worn out to fight with them again. I dont really blame the doctors but i think its just a perfect example of why privatized medicine is not the way to go. Money has crept into the education of doctors and the way that we do everything and this is what were left with, great technology that should only really be used in extreme circumstances, but if we only buy this stuff for the extreme cases then thats not very profitable and the research could not be funded privately without the technology being even more ridiculously expensive.

*cliff notes...pitocin makes labor more painful and leads to epidurals, and doctors overreact to make the birthing experience a pretty shitty one*

Moving on.....Lindy pushed Katie out so fast it caught the doctors off guard and they had to rush to get everything set up. 20 minutes of pushing and Katie was born:


Right away i suspected we might be in luck. Katie came out, cried a couple time, and then when ridiculously calm. She was hungry right away and got weighed, measured, cleaned up, and fed and then we went up to our room. 

We were at the hospital for two days and things were way harder there but thank god for those nurses who taught us A LOT in a very short amount of time. 

Since weve been home we have really gotten the hang of the whole taking care of a newborn thing. Katie rarely cries and we have a nice sleep pattern set up. I am really shocked at how easy it has been so far. Although today she did have an incident where i was changing a wet diaper and par for the course Katie decided to shit, except this shit flew up and over her diaper and out onto the carpet about 3 feet.....it was really disgusting, but im doing ok with the whole handling somebody else's shit thing. 

Here are some pictures to finish this quick update blog up
Future Degen


going home outfit