Mama Mia! A Wee Bairn on the Way: 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!