Terrible Twosome Left Home Alone

It's hard to believe that Angus is now 16 days old. It's hard to imagine life before Angus, a feeling I'm told is pretty normal. I mean that in all of the best ways, of course, though also in some of those "how did I not appreciate how wonderful it was to be able to walk up to 7/11 without major planning???" ways. An otherwise previously routine trip to Macy's and Best Buy yesterday turned into a major production, for example, with me spending most of the Best Buy time in the car, changing a massively poopy diaper or feeding his royal highness. Carrying a screaming baby out of the store does make you wish you'd been a bit more sympathetic to parents in the same position before you became a fellow sucker, but that's just the order of things, I suppose.

I do have to say, I've become quite adept at multi-tasking with one hand, though!

Anyway, the wee man is now about 8 pounds, so the pediatrician is quite happy with his progress. Which means that we are also very happy that he's a healthy little boy. Because, as illustrated by the pictures below, any annoyance/frustration/tear-your-hair-out moments are automatically forgotten the second he makes one of his faces. :)

The title of this post comes from Christopher leaving for Ft. Worth today for a work conference, leaving Angus and me alone. Abbey and Molly will be here during the days, but I may or may not make it out alive.

Ok, so he's not supposed to sleep on me, but he's so small and cute when he curls up on my chest, it's hard to resist letting him nap there.

Hanging out in the big bed. Onesie courtesy of our Aunt Judy.

There's a little bit of Zoolander in this picture. I'm not sure if I'm happy about that yet or not.

Another drunk face.

My absolute favorite picture of him so far. He's not really smiling at me, but this picture alone could make a shitty day seem much, much better.

We did NOT style his hair for this.

Day 12...

A quick update and photo fun, as Angus is finally down for a nap. Ok, I should clarify that, last night, he only woke up once, so I actually got some decent sleep, for which I am extremely grateful. And he did nothing but sleep, observe the outside world, and make the occasional chipmunk-type chirp when I took him for an hour-long walk this morning. So, all-in-all, a pretty good kid. But he's also a hungry little dude, as well as a pooping-machine (and I do realize none of this is remotely unique to him, but I'm a first-time mom, so what do you expect?), so nap-times will probably become less and less frequent.

Grandma went home to Kansas last night after staying on to help me out for a while. Her assistance was GREATLY appreciated. For example, with Grandma watching Angus, I've been able to shower every day since leaving the hospital (I even managed to today, on my own), which I hear is somewhat of a rarity when living with a newborn. I'm sure she's happy to have a little down time before the other two grandkids descend on Kansas in early September :), but for what it's worth, her help was invaluable.

So now I'm on my own, as Christopher also went back to work yesterday. At the moment, I seem to be maintaining my sanity, but stay tuned. Depending on the future content and tone of these posts, emergency deliveries of espresso and/or Sonic cheesy tots may be required.

Starting our daily walk. A fairly wet, muggy day, but we got started before it got too bad, and he was a trooper.

Passed out.

Trying to fight the urge to nap.

Again, nothing special about my baby except that, well, he's MY baby. So, to me, his "I'm hungry" faces are the funniest things in the world.

Slightly less comical, but one of many Angus faces.

And finally....Angus George

As my father reminded me, this blog was being woefully neglected. Since I started the blog with "Sparky" in mind, I should really record the culmination of the last 7 months or so - i.e. Sparky's birth.

I won't go into a lot of gory detail, but July 24th came and went with nary an extra kick from Sparky. Not that my intuition had any validity, but I really didn't feel like he was going to be coming any time soon. Evidently the doctors felt the same way, as they had me scheduled for induction from week 39. When I was showing no signs of labor well into week 40, I had to accept that D-Day wasn't going to happen without the assistance of drugs.

I picked up my parents from the airport on Wednesday, July 31st - they'd, of course, originally scheduled their trip with the purpose of meeting the new baby, not of actually being there for the birth. But, of course, it's impossible to predict what's going to happen with due dates and all that. Wednesday was a flurry of eating last, uninterrupted meals and napping (for the record, Angus, we had pizza and meatball subs from the Italian Deli as our Last Meal) before Christopher and I checked into the hospital at 11pm that night. Funny thing is that my labor contractions actually started earlier in the evening - probably around 8pm - which was discovered once we got to the hospital.

Fast-forward 10 hours later, and very little progress with labor combined with increasingly back-to-back, very painful contractions meant that my previous determination NOT to have an epidural FLEW out the window. And thus the next 9 hours were passed in a very relaxed, pain-free oblivion of HGTV on the hospital television and a revolving door of nurses and the doctor. I completely lost all feeling in my legs, but the lack of pain with contractions was worth it.

By about 5pm, the doctor informed us that I was going to be ready to push in the next hour or two...I was very excited, as I was hoping to avoid a C-section, and, of course, nervous now that the grand finale was finally in sight. Unfortunately, the baby had other ideas, and as we were literally a few pushes away from meeting the little man, his heart rate started dropping fast. The doctor made the call for an emergency C-section, and I was rushed to the operating room. It was scary - seeing the look on my doctor's face said it all about the potential direness of the situation - but they had me in the operating room, surrounded by 10+ hospital staff members and knocked out - within about 2 minutes. Christopher was suited up in scrubs, but because they didn't have time to give me enough pain killer to keep me awake during surgery, he was ultimately kept out of the OR.

All's well that ends well, fortunately, and Angus George Lynch was born at 7:34pm on Thursday, August 1st. Grandpa Marden's birthday :). Since I had been knocked out, I didn't resurface until after 9pm, and to say I was out of it at first is the understatement of the century. Of course, I was also in horrific pain from the C-section, and I was shaking so badly from the pain at first that I couldn't hold the baby. About 7 doses of morphine later, I was finally able to 1) understand where I was and the fact that I had a baby, and 2) hold my new son for the first time.

It was a tiring night, but the hospital staff was fantastic - we did not meet a single nurse/doctor/etc. who was less than pleasant and helpful. They kept us in the hospital until Sunday, and Angus George is now at home and already controlling the household schedule. :)

For me, it's been a wild ride in many ways. Everyone says that you can't understand the intensity of the love you feel for your baby until/unless you experience it, which is very definitely true. A fortunate thing for little Angus, since he can be a determined, demanding little bugger!

Of course, they also say you can't understand how overwhelming and tiring having a new baby is until you experience it. Well, duh. I'm only one week in, so I'm sure I have much to learn and will only get more tired and overwhelmed, but this week has been more difficult because recovering from the emergency C-section has been, in a word, rough. I'm starting to feel more human, thankfully, but it's been a tough week. For someone who would sometimes run 10-15 miles/day with no problem, it's amazing how this experience has kicked my ass. Far more physically challenging than any marathon.

Anyway, we are very, very happy to have little Angus George in our lives. He's a sweet little dude - very serious in some funny ways. One of the hospital nurses called him a very "patient" baby, which I thought was funny. And a good sign. He's also ridiculously cute. Though that may not be an unbiased opinion :).

Here are some photos from the hospital and first week with Angus. D-Day has arrived!

First (coherent) moments post C-section.

First day in a non-hospital-issue outfit.



Sleeping like an angel. Or carefully-concealed devil :).

Dad helping with first bath at the hospital.

Angus in his car seat, completely passed out.

With Grandma. A pseudo-smile.

Cranky face.

First walk to Giant and back.

With Grandpa Dave.

Maya and Angus sizing each other up. Though Angus seems more interested in his hands.

Yep, he's definitely my son, sleeping like that. Reminiscent of a certain picture of me sleeping on a Czech train...

Abbey and Molly with their new brother.

The recovery room at the hospital.

The "status board" in the delivery room.