Reminiscing

I don't know why, but I've been thinking a lot about past memories, and have been wanting to blog about some of those things. This may not be interesting to anyone but myself, but I'm going to indulge myself anyway.

I don't remember the exact date, but I do know which night I got pregnant with arkieboy. (Warning: this post may cross over into the TMI zone quite frequently and without any further warnings. Read further at your own risk.) I know which night it was, because I did not get up immediately after my then DH (*shudders* at the thought of referring to him as DH, unless it stands for dickhead, because then it fits.) and I had sex. I had wanted to have a baby so much, and I had been off of birth control for over a year. I would get so upset each month when my period started. It was actually at the point that DH had said he wanted us to stop trying because he didn't like seeing me upset like that. I'm not really sure why I wanted to have a child with him so badly. Our marriage was not were it needed to be, so maybe I thought a child would bring us together? Maybe make me have deeper feelings for him?

I think I need to back up even further on this. I honestly don't know if I ever truly loved my ex-husband. I think I said I loved him because he said he loved me, and I felt obligated to return it. I married him because I lived in a small town, the selection of potential husbands/mates/whatever was practically non-existent, and I was so afraid that if I didn't marry *him*, I would never get married. So, with that being the basis of my "love" for him, you can probably guess that we did not have the greatest of relationships after a year or so of marriage. We had actually only known each other for about 9 months when we married. To be honest, I wasn't so sure I wanted to marry him by the time we got married, but I have a very immature level of stubbornness. My mom and some of my co-workers had been telling me I shouldn't marry him, I didn't love him, blah, blah, blah. And that is one of the quickest ways to get me to do something stupid - tell me I don't know my own mind and what I'm thinking. So I had to "prove" to them that marrying him was *not* a bad decision on my part. But I can't completely regret my marriage, because if not for that, I wouldn't have my son.

So, after after being married for a little over a year, I got pregnant. I had started being sick at work, and was throwing up every day after lunch for about a week or two. I was so unaware and not in tune with my body, that I had no suspicion of being pregnant until a co-worker asked if that was a possibility after I was complaining of this weird "virus" I had, that I was sick every day, but only after lunch. When she asked me that, it just clicked that yes, I was late. Since I worked at a nursing home, and the lab company we used for our residents' lab work offered free lab work to employees, I had a blood test sent off to see if I was pregnant. Of course, when it came back, I had to ask the Director of Nursing to interpret the results for me. I was pregnant. When I told DH, he thought I was lying/joking.

The whole pregnancy was a surreal time for me. I never really felt the baby move until I was about 6-7 months along. The most amazing thing to me was getting to hear his heartbeat for the first time. The ultrasound didn't really do anything for me. People at work wanted to see the ultrasound pictures, and I made the comment that it just looked like a blob to me, not a baby. But hearing that heartbeat. God, it was such a big moment for me. Note that I said "for me". DH would not go to the doctor's appointments with me. For the first few visits, he would take me to the doctor, drop me off, and either cruise around or go to Wal-Mart until time to pick me up. He wouldn't even go in with me for the ultrasound, because he didn't like hospitals. After that, my mom took me.

Working at the nursing home meant working with mostly women. There were a couple of men who worked there, but the majority was women. Women can be such bitches to other women sometimes. Well, to be fair, humans can be such asses to each other sometimes. Anyway, one of my fellow employees had asked me at one point, in a rather snide voice, if the doctor had told me to start watching my weight gain yet. Because I didn't need to "balloon out". (Just because *your daughter* gained 100 pounds while pregnant doesn't mean other people are ballooning out, bitch.) Luckily for me, I could honestly say that the doctor had just told me that I was doing EXCELLENT on my weight. From my first visit at approximately 6 weeks until two days before my c-section, I had only gained 9 pounds. Of course, I couldn't eat chocolate, ice cream, anything else sweet or fried foods without getting sick, so I ate very healthy while I was pregnant. I also walked a lot. Mainly because my DH kept the car, and didn't get off work until several hours after me (he worked as a farm hand), so I walked home from work. We didn't have a phone, so if I needed to call my mother, I had to walk 5-6 blocks to the pay phone. That same woman asked me if I had felt the baby move (I think I was 5 months then), and when I said no, she said there must be something wrong with the baby because EVERYONE feels the baby move by 4 months.

I had went past my due date of July 10, and the doctor had me coming in 3x a week to check me. Like I said up there *points up*, I had only gained 9 pounds until two days before the doctor decided to do a c-section. The baby had still not dropped, there were no signs of labor pains, and from the 17th to the 19th, I had gained 20 pounds. (I think it was 20. For some reason, I'm thinking that it might have actually been more, but I'll stick with 20 because I don't want to exaggerate.) I was highly offended that the nurse didn't reweigh me, to make sure the scales weren't off. So, I gained 20 pounds, my blood pressure was extremely high, and the doc wanted me to go to the hospital for observation until my b/p went down. This through me into a tailspin, and I started crying when I went out to the waiting room to tell my mom and sister that he was sending me over to the hospital. In the "arkie can be so clueless" category, instead of getting in my mom's car and having her drive me, because the hospital was next to the doctor's office, I walked over. The labor and delivery area that I needed to go to was in the far end of the hospital. It probably took me about 15 minutes to walk there. This, while having such high b/p that the doctor thought I needed to be in an observation bed. I'm sure that really helped the b/p level.

After I got over there, and they put me in a bed, I lay there for about 20 minutes. Then the nurse came in and said they were going to go ahead and do the c-section because it was Friday evening, I would probably go into labor in the next day or so, and the delivery team did not want to be called in over the weekend, so they were just going to get it out of the way. To this day, I still wonder if there was something more going on, but the doctor didn't want to tell me.

Because I was having a c-section, I had to have an epidural. They have me sitting on this gurney, my belly out to here *holds hand far away from body*, and they tell me to bend over my stomach and arch my back. More, more. I'm sorry, the belly does not have any "give" to it. I can only hunch over so far. Ugh. Then they had me lay down, and they put a blanket across my chest, and strapped my arms down. They put up a blanket over my belly, so I couldn't see anything that was going on. The anesthesiologist kept telling me to quit moving. But the blanket kept sliding down on my throat, and I can't stand to have anything on my neck. They said the blanket was to keep me from getting cold, but I don't get cold. I wanted them to take it off of me, but they wouldn't. The c-section surgery was strange. I couldn't feel anything, but I did know when they had cut all the way through, because I felt my belly fall to either side. The official birth time was 6:18 pm. I didn't hear arkieboy cry for a few minutes. I was starting to get worried because I couldn't see anything because of the barrier they had hanging, and I couldn't hear anything - nothing was being said. But as they were carrying him out, the nurse stopped so I could see him. He was so beautiful to me, I just wanted to cry. I couldn't touch him because my arms were still strapped down. That moment, that one moment, was the best moment of my life. Whenever I'm asked if there is a moment in life I would relive, that's the one. Just so I could feel the emotions again that come when you see your child for the first time.