About a boy

What can say about this year…I’ve been thinking about it so much, everything we’ve gone through, everything we’ve learned about ourselves as individuals, as a couple, as parents, as friends, on and on and on…I guess I should probably tell the story about the reason for this transformation. So here’s a story about a boy…

I got pregnant very easily and for the most part, had an easy pregnancy. I remember the day that we found out we were having a boy – it was January 5th, 2009. The ultrasound tech was hesitant to say for sure but it was pretty undeniable. And speaking of denial, I swore that I was having a girl. For a week or more, I kept expecting that extra little body part to disappear but we all know the end of the story and the “maleness” stayed put! The first time I felt Cal kick, I was 22 weeks. It was Valentines Day, a cold Saturday. I was sitting on the living room sofa, Indian style with my laptop on my legs and then I felt it, a little tap on my left side. I had all kinds of strange muscle twitches from the beginning but I knew this one was different. It was a tap, tap “hello, I’m here!” kind of movement. That’s when the conversations with Cal (although I didn’t know we would name him Calvin then) began. We started talking on a daily basis, well, I talked, he listened and kicked me, most likely to get me to shut up. As I got closer to the finish line, I felt pretty good. I still walked a couple of miles everyday and did yoga twice a week.

39 weeks

By June 15th, I could tell things were changing. The doctor had already scheduled an induction for Monday, June 22nd but I was determined to go into labor naturally. My motivation stemmed from the fact that all along, my doctor was concerned about my physical ability to deliver “the old fashioned way”. My bone structure is narrow and she was concerned that the baby would get stuck. However, she was very supportive of my desire to try to avoid a c-section but warned me that the likelihood was great. So this was it – possibly my one shot to let nature take its course and do its thing to get the wiggle monster out of me. I had an appointment on Wednesday, June 17th and not much had changed. I was at a 2 and his head was super low. I felt pretty lousy though, kind of like I had the flu, so I was officially declared on maternity leave! The next day, Cal’s official due date, was spent running errands. I loved to see the reaction on strangers’ faces when they would ask when I was due and I would respond “today”. They would immediately look down as if Cal was going to fall out on the floor. That night, I was feeling pretty run down. Jeff forced me out the door at 9pm to walk around the block. I honestly didn’t think I could do it but I felt a little better afterwards. I crashed into bed that night and at 5am on June 19th, the action started.

Jeff left early that Friday morning for several sales calls. I had a little notebook in my nightstand and I started writing the contraction times down. For some strange reason, I still couldn’t believe what was going on so I didn’t tell Jeff. Instead, I called one of my oldest, dearest friends, Brianne, in Florida. She’s had 2 kids and is a physician’s assistant, so I figured she would know what was up. Here’s what she said – “Melanie, you are in labor, you should probably go to the hospital”. Here’s what I thought – “Hmmmmmm….maybe I’ll wait a little while longer to call my parents and Jeff.” Really smart, Mel. I finally broke down and called Jeff. By the time he got home, my contractions were around 5 minutes apart and we hit the road, with my little contraction notebook in hand. This was 3:30 and the weekend traffic was already starting to get heavy. At that point, I thought I had waited too long and that I would end up like one of those women on TLC who has her baby on the side of the highway. We made it to St John’s, the baby factory of the Midwest, and I insisted on waddling in as opposed to letting Jeff push me in a wheelchair. I was able to get in a room quickly; I think the look of sheer panic on my face did the trick. I could not BELIEVE how much pain I was in at that point. Once I got my gown on, I hopped up on the bed on all fours and wouldn’t move. I looked ridiculous and obscene in my backless gown but that was the only thing that provided any relief. All modesty was out the door. The nurse checked me and I was at a 5 and the cause of my intense pain was the fact that Cal was “sunny side up” so the back labor was intense, to say the least. We moved into a delivery room and I headed straight for the bathroom. I wanted to sit down, not lie in a bed or walk around. Unfortunately, once I sat down, I literally could not get up. That was until the anesthesiologist arrived. I would have stood on my head at that point to get an epidural. Here’s where I quickly learned the difference between those who can and those who can’t do natural labor. I’m in the “can’t” category. In order to be a “can”, you have to have the ability to power through that weak point, to get in the correct headspace. Once I hit a 5, my strength dissolved. I need medication to make that pain go away and I needed it right now. Whewwwwwwwww…. I can still feel the relief of those drugs as I type this.

After that, I was a-okay. I talked, I laughed, I joked, they broke my water, I laughed some more. I couldn’t feel a thing!! Dr. B showed up and took a look at me around 7:30pm and said I was ready to push. I was at a 10! Let’s do this! Game on! So I pushed and I pushed….and I pushed….and I pushed….he was stuck. I pushed until 10:30 pm and he was in the same spot. I have to hand it to Dr. B; she was a great sport. Most doctors would have thrown in the towel long before that but she knew how hard I wanted to try. Alas, it was not meant to be. I started prepping for a c-section. The anesthesiologist came back and gave me the really heavy duty stuff. I remember everything being kind of foggy and then feeling sick but I couldn’t articulate how I felt. The shaking set in and it seems like I shook for hours! We were wheeled off into the OR and I was told by Dr. B and that I would feel a little pressure (didn’t feel a thing, by the way). I sort of recall falling asleep and then opening my eyes to a screaming, purple baby. I so wanted to soak that moment in but I could not keep my eyes open for anything! There he was, all 6lbs, 8oz, 19inches of Cal kicking and flailing around, born at 12:34am on Saturday, June 20th, one week exactly after my 30th birthday.

The next few hours were a complete blur – the recovery, the nursing, the crazy hormones that made me sweat all night long. I kept thinking, “Is this all real or not”? This kid is REALLY mine and I have to take care of him and shape him into a respectable human being? Thankfully, the drugs wore off, lala land disappeared and reality set it. The next afternoon, Cal had a little dip in his breathing so he was whisked off to the NICU to be monitored. Everything turned out just fine and we were home on Wednesday, June 24th.

First week home = tired mommy and daddy

I would be lying if I said those first few weeks were easy. They were scary! I wanted to nurse but it wasn’t working. I wanted to sleep but Cal wasn’t really keen on that idea either. Here’s what I figured out in those first weeks – it wasn’t about me anymore and, frankly, it hasn’t been since. We decided to give up on the nursing after about 3 weeks and a weight lifted. Cal was a great eater and better yet, Jeff could help me. I remember when the feeling of nervousness suddenly lightened and I didn’t mind getting up at 3 in the morning because that was my peaceful time with Cal. He smiled at me for the first time during one of those middle of the night feedings and I’ve been a fool for him ever since. I’m curious about people who say that its bliss from the word “go” when it comes to first time parenthood. I wanted to be that person and the harder I tried to fit into the mold of some other mother, the more resentful I became of my new role. Yes, there might have been some post-partum issues mixed in there, but the best medicine for our family was figuring out what worked for us and not trying to follow the books. By 5 weeks, we went on our first road trip and I finally felt like our new normal had settled on our family.

I can’t imagine life without this boy. Calvin is our compass. He hugs my neck so tight and gives me a big puppy-dog kiss and I am in awe that God chose me to take care of him. Happy first birthday, little boy.

Spring sprung and now its almost gone

The little man has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few months. Let me tell you, this kid has a 'TUDE! I have no idea where he would get that.....

Here's some pictures of semi-sweet Cal through the course of the spring.

Little cotton tail

With pals Sarah and Josie

Getting ready for the big Easter Egg Hunt

     Eating at Mimi & Papa's in my old high chair

Watching Papa mow

First big boo boo. Check out that goose egg!

Papa's Surprise 60th party

Gigi's 91st birthday party

Taking monkey for a spin

Just riding a sheep with my buddy G

Botanical Gardens

Grants Farm tram with Papa

Make your bed

I've been feeling a little out of order lately. Our house looks we are in preparation for a garage sale at all times. We aren't. We don't even have a garage, to speak of. Over the last 3 months we've traveled, dealt with colds and stomach bugs, had parties, went to parties and celebrated two big birthdays in Springfield when Dad turned 60 and Grandma turned 91. I've started P90X over 3 times. I'm on the 4th week and this is the longest stretch that I've done it by. the. book.

Here's when I knew that I'd gone a little off the rails - I was sick on Mother's Day, my very first Mother's Day, so Jeff and Cal went out to the in-laws for dinner. I was on antibiotics, snotty and coughing, all by myself. Yet, I was totally blissed out on the couch and as peaceful as I had felt in a while. I watched a movie with dialog that was so great, I kept rewinding certain parts and it ended up taking me almost 3 hours to watch a 2 hour movie. I NEVER GET TO DO THAT. I think that I needed this gift for my first Mother's Day to get my mind right. I made a mental list of ways that I know will start my days calmer and allow me to exhale slower when I finally crash into bed. The first on my list is to start making our bed every single morning. I could never figure out why our bedroom always reminded me of a college dorm until I started taking the time to make our bed. I'm already breathing a little easier.

I'm committed. Or commit me?

I started P90X literally an hour and a half ago. As in "I just finished Day 1 of 90 days". Since I'm putting this out there for the world to see, I think I just committed myself to actually following through with this thing. I'm not taking a before picture or measurements. I'll just let the jeans do the talking. Or the bikini. Jeff and I are taking a little 4 day mental health break to Cali on April 9 so I have exactly 2 months from tomorrow to make myself presentable. I guess at the pace I'm on, I'll only be two thirds presentable...

On the cute front, Momo is convinced that Cal has said "Hi" on two occasions over the past week. I'm not buying it although I wouldn't mind a child prodigy. Or at least a kid with really advanced verbal skills. He has also started shooting dirty looks to people that annoy him, specifically loud adults. I'm not naming any names, but if looks could kill there would have been a couple of dead guys at the Lee's Superbowl party last night. Cal was not down with the noise.

Back to the subject at hand - Day 1 is on the books. Ninety days from now, I better be describing some major muscle definition or I'm demanding a refund.

This and that

Momma is tired today. I don’t even know why I’m attempting to write something coherent. I have yawned so many times today that my eyes won’t stop watering. I am sans mascara. Not a pretty sight for my coworkers. Alright. Getting off the whiny train now.

We’ve had a good/exhausting couple of weeks – Springfield the weekend of the 16th and KC the weekend of 23rd for Jeff’s birthday. Springfield was the typical whirlwind. We did a redo of the “Thanksgiving” family pic so we could include a real live version of brother.

Fake Lance

Real Lance

Then off to KC for Jeff’s birthday and for Cal to meet the entire KC crew. We love our KC “family”, we really really do. I would not have been sad at all to live there for a few years before firmly planting ourselves in St Louis. But Thomas Food Marketing duty called and here we are. We got to meet Madison, my cousin Sean’s baby who was born in October. She is such a sweet little peanut and Cal was completely enthralled with her. I think her petite, pink cuteness confused him. He is completely surrounded by boys at all times – his cousins, babysitter buds, non babysitter buds.

  
Momma, Cal, Laura, Sweet Madison

Cousins

"What is this creature dressed in pink?"

Our gracious hosts, Jeff and Kristin, threw a Mexican fiesta on Saturday night. Enchiladas, tacos and guacamole. Delicious. For the grand finale, I secrectly had a birthday cake made with the help of my cohorts, J & K. We brought it out in flames and sang “Happy Birthday” chain-restaurant style (i.e. loud, obnoxious, with lots of clapping). Jeff was equal parts embarrassed and pleased. The ringing in of his 31st year was happy indeed.

Mix Master Jeff

Surprise!!!

Little man also rang in his 7 month. Instead of having his picture taken in a hospital bed, he was rocking out in the sweet chair that Gigi gave him. Oh and his funny little cough that he had over the weekend was actually RSV. He is still bouncing off the walls with energy and eating like a piglet. We decided to keep him out of Momo’s the rest of the week since she keeps another little guy a couple of months younger than Cal. We are all for teaching the importance of sharing, just not germs.

Happy 7 months, little fella

Dr. Z's office has lots of fun toys

Mommy and Cal

Homeward Bound

We are loading up the family VW and heading southwest! This will be our first road trip since The Great Sickness of 2009. I gave Momo clear instructions to wear Cal out today so he will be a good little traveler for the 3 hour trip. The objective is minimal crying. Happy Cal = Happy Mel.  Now if I could only think of a good way to wear Annie out. We used to take her to doggie day care (yes, we are those people) and she loved it but she came down with kennel cough twice despite being current on her shots. You haven't lived until you have listened to a dog cough for days on end. Ugh.

There are a lot of people on the agenda to see and I'm pretty sure it will be impossible to squeeze them all in a 48 period while trying to maintain some sort of schedule for Cal. This is when my guilt sets in, actually a whole range of emotions - excited to see everybody, guilt for not spending enough time with said people, happiness when I do see them, exhaustion/irritation for feeling spread too thin and then sadness for leaving. This cycle happens every. single. trip. home. At least I cut the hysterical/weepy part out of the cycle when we are leaving. I never, ever thought I would get used to calling St Louis home. It changed when I had Cal. Where he is at, Jeff and I are home.

Cal's story pt 2

That first night in the hospital is kind of fuzzy. I sent Jeff home. His sleeping is fitful enough and I knew that there would be many interruptions. The peds unit at St John's is very new and very nice. If we were going to be stuck anywhere for an extended amount of time, this was the place to be. All of the furniture was soft and comfy, the nurses were so accommodating and sweet. They kept Cal doped up all night in an effort to keep his fever down but he still woke very early. I held him and we rocked and rocked until Jeff arrived around 9am. He seemed to be doing a little better so I left to go sleep at home for a few hours. While I was gone, the doctors ordered a renal ultrasound and discovered inflammation in both kidneys and a highly muscular bladder (our bladders are supposed to be round and smooth. Cal's looked like the shape of a Christmas tree, 'tis the season).

It was decided then that a permanent catheter needed to be inserted since the bladder and kidneys weren't draining properly. I could see the hesitation on several nurses faces over the next few days when they discovered that they were assigned to an infant patient with a catheter. Apparently, caths in babies are pretty uncommon. The catheter turned Cal into a happy kid though (AFTER it was inserted, of course). His bladder was so full and he finally had relief. He wanted to eat and play for the first time in 48 hours. His fever was still present and we learned why on Tuesday the 15th. His infection had spread so rapidly from his bladder to his kidneys, he became septic. This was a word that I was familiar with from all of my years of watching ER but I never really knew the seriousness of it. And to be perfectly honest, I sort of blocked it out despite the fact that Dr. Z had told me that if we would have waited to take him back to the doctor instead of going to the hospital, there would have been a tragic ending. The longer sepsis goes untreated, it essentially starts attacking the major organs and they will eventually shut down. Hours can literally mean the difference between life and death. I get a stomach ache every time I think about that.

By Wednesday, his fever had broken and we had somewhat of a plan of attack. The pediatric infectious disease doctor had visited with us and decided that Cal needed to be on IV antibiotics for three weeks AFTER his blood showed up clean. This was to ensure that the bacterium was completely eradicated from his blood. The IV in his hand would be too unsafe when we were finally released home so we would have a PICC line placed in his upper left arm, again, after the bacteria was no longer present in his blood.

At this point, we were waiting on the bacteria issue but we did have a diagnosis of his kidneys and bladder. Dr Z suspected that Cal was born with something called Posterior Urethral Valves (later confirmed), which basically causes urine to reflux back up into his bladder and kidneys. This is something that could have been detected when I was pregnant in my ultrasounds but unfortunately it wasn't. We were put in touch with an outstanding pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital, Dr. C, but were warned that we would be in the hospital until surgery could be performed and due to the holidays, we probably wouldn't get on the surgery schedule until after Christmas. No biggie. We just went out and bought an awesome fiber optic tree, brought his stocking to his room and counted down the days until Christmas! Those of you who read the last entry know that we lucked out and were put on the surgery schedule Christmas Eve!

On Monday, Dec 21st we learned that Cal's blood had been clean since the 17th, so off to surgery he went to get the PICC line placed. It was scary knowing that he had to go under but since babies are so wiggly, they have no other choice. He did wonderfully and finally had use of his left hand again. The doctors and nurses in the OR loved him because he apparently was smiling at them until he drifted off. Then on Wednesday, Dec 23rd we packed up our room at St John's and took an ambulance ride to Children's. It was kind of bittersweet to leave St John's because we had gotten to know several of the nurses really well. We had taken countless walks around the ward in his wagon (with the urine bag attached to our pockets), had so many visitors that his room looked like a toy store, and had his first visit from Santa. He took his first bites of food in that room and turned 6 months old on the 20th. Don't get me wrong - we wanted out of there. But we had also grown comfortable in our new routine.

Children's was another story. This hospital is known nationwide for its amazing pediatric care but it was like night and day compared to St Johns. It was chaotic and in your face. Far too much going on for our taste. Thank goodness that he only had one night there. Bright and early on Christmas Eve morning, we got a call that we had been bumped up the schedule and he would go in by 9am. We met with Dr C, the surgeon, and the anesthesiologist. Then we waited. For a whole 45 minutes and it was over! Again, Cal did great. It took them longer to sedate him than the actual procedure. After he woke up in recovery, we all took a nap in his room waiting to be discharged. While we were sleeping, "Santa" unloaded a ton of gifts for Cal. We felt sort of guilty for getting those since so many other kids actually had to stay through the holidays and we were literally counting the minutes until we could leave. All Cal had left to do was pee and we were out of there. Jeff and I kept undoing his diaper every 5 minutes. When he finally did the deed, adios!!!!

We got home and took a 3 hour family nap. It was the best nap ever. I felt like I needed to keep pinching myself. Our ordeal wasn't completely over as we still had to meet with a home health nurse that evening to teach me how to administer the IV antibiotics through his PICC at home for the next 2 weeks. It was a little tricky the first few times (a 32 minute process from beginning to end) but then after a few treatments, it was no big deal. The PICC was taken out last Friday, Jan 8th and he started an oral antibiotic that evening that he will have to continue for a year to keep future UTIs at bay until he outgrows the residual reflux issues. The new antibiotic tastes like grape. He likes it.

So that's that. Our ordeal that we will never forget and he'll never remember. We were on prayer lists in Brooklyn, LA, Orlando, San Antonio, the list goes on and on. We discovered so many things about ourselves, or family and our friends that are invaluable. The moral of the story is Cal has hit his hospital quota for his childhood, maybe until he's about 65. He's allowed to do crazy little boy things like get stitches and break bones. But no more near fatal illness.

Sleepy mom and babe. Cal screamed when he woke up and saw how scary mommy looked.

I'm 6 months old!!

Get that camera outta my face.

First solid food. Noticed the styrofoam cup/bowl. Nice.

First Santa experience

Wagon ride with Aunt Lisa

Taking his peeps for a spin around the hospital.

First treatment at home on Christmas morning