The "That Just Happened" Misadventure

We're typical family people and generally like to spend as much time with our families as we can. Lucky for us, they all live in the same town. So, this weekend we went to visit and had a normal, lovely weekend ending with church, visiting and a trip back to our hometown (about an hour's ride). Our son, Tyler, is such a good traveler. He either entertains himself in the car or usually falls right to sleep. On our trip back this time he fell asleep about 15 minutes into the ride. We had a nice, peaceful trip until about 10 minutes from home when he woke up and decided that no amount of singing or Raffi playing over the stereo would calm him down. We managed to make it home and decided he must be hungry, it was approaching his dinnertime anyway.

We get him inside and I warm up some squash (we're finally on to veggies!) and mix in some cereal. He's still in full-on scream mode and is having nothing to do with it. We fight a little and he manages to eat a few bites. Meanwhile, my husband is unloading the car and putting things away so he is in and out. The squash isn't working so I ditch the idea and start making a bottle of formula. Poor Tyler is red-faced and wailing in his highchair at this point. I get him out and take him in the living room in an attempt to administer the bottle. My husband all the while making suggestions about what to do and trying to help me hurry along to get the bottle in his mouth. I'm beginning to get frustrated, my husband is beginning to get frustrated and the baby is past the point of frustration. Tyler takes some of  the bottle and then needs a break as he usually does since he's currently congested. My husband goes back to his unloading the car business and I let Tyler relax a little bit and decide to try some more squash while we wait. He gladly takes a few bites of this since he's calmer now. All of the sudden out of nowhere he starts up again. The red-faced wails come back and the tears are flowing. Now I'm confused. Here, I thought we were all friends again! So, I decide maybe that pesky tooth is bothering him. I'll get him some Tylenol and let it start to work. I give him that and still the crying continues. By this point we're all frustrated.

The checklist begins. Hungry, no, we just ate. Hot, no. In pain? Probably not. Ah, maybe he's dirty! So, I take him to the bedroom with my husband in tow. I get his diaper off and he's barely dirty but maybe that's the problem. I go to switch diapers and here it comes, the rest of the apparent problem (he has just started real food so the digestive system has been working slow...this was a welcomed "problem"). Luckily the diaper was slid in there right in time. We get him all cleaned up and put in his pajamas (we have given up the rest of the eating thing by now). As I'm carrying the baby and his dirty clothes out to the laundry room, BURP! Squash. All over my arm, the baby's clean pajamas and the only clean sleep sack I currently have. With a little laugh (because what else are you going to do at this point) I head back to the bedroom to change him again. New, clean pajamas. While I'm there, I decide to check the diaper one more time. As soon as I open the flap on one side, yep, you guessed it! Pee. On the sheets, on my hand, on himself. Luckily, not on any jammies yet because he didn't have any on at this point.

So, I get him re-jammied once again in the warmest jammies I have because he has no clean sleep sack now and change the sheets on his crib. I finally get him to sleep with a little round of crying, pacifier-in, pacifier-out. It was definitely one of those trying nights! Hopefully he'll sleep all the way through it now after all of that excitement! And don't worry, I'm drying a clean sleep sack now. He'll be warm and cozy in no time.

That's the latest misadventure! Sometimes even normal Sundays get crazy around here.

The Great Birth Misadventure

Tyler Nicholas Pleasant in the NICU

Tyler and Mommy in the NICU

For this post, I'm going back several months, but it's definitely still a story worth telling. Strange as it may seem, the birth of my son was quite the misadventure! I was reminded to tell the story after a recent reunion with all of his hospital buddies from the intensive care unit.

7:50 am: It started like a typical Friday on May 6th, 2011. I got up (34 weeks, 4 days pregnant, so it was a slow process) and got ready for work. As I went to put my jeans on, my water broke. At first I wasn't sure what was happening because we still had 5 weeks until our little guy was supposed to be here! After deciding yes, I was in fact in the beginning stages of labor, I got my husband out of the shower and told him it was time to get going. Of course we had nothing packed and hadn't even installed our carseats! That was all on the list of "Things To Get Done in the Next Week or So." Afterall, it had only been a week after my graduate classes finals, several weeks after my baby shower and only TWO DAYS after my maternity photos had been snapped (Thank you, Jana Johnson for getting those done just in time!)!

8:04 am: A little shaky, but under control, Tony and I both began to walk about the house packing any and everything we could think we might need at the hospital. Strangely enough, this was almost a peaceful, organized process, but I suppose if you know us you know we're generally pretty level-headed. We even had enough wits about us to find the list the doctor gave us of things we'd need to take along. So, we gathered all of that up, spent several agonizing minutes deciding exactly what we should put in our bag for the baby to come home in and got the carseat installed in my car. Phone calls were made to both sets of parents (soon-to-be-grandparents!). Now it was off to the hospital.

8:50 am: But first, we had to make a pitstop to Walgreens because we didn't have everything on the list. Tony ran in while I waited in the car with my beach towel. It had now been a little over an hour since my water had broken. Several minutes later, Tony returned with everything else we needed in hand. He said, "I must've had that 'dad-on-the-way-to-the-hospital' look because the clerk saw me in the aisle and said, 'having a baby?' I told him we were and he said, 'what's on your list?' and proceeded to help me gather it all up." All I can say, is bless that man's heart.

9:18 am: We arrive at the hospital emergency room and are immediately directed up to the birthing center floor. Of course it was Friday and my OB/GYN is out of the office on Fridays. I was sure they'd have to page him, he wouldn't answer and I'd be stuck with someone I'd never met. After the nurses determined, yes my water had broken and it wasn't something else (duh!) they hooked me up to a contraction monitor and told me to wait a few minutes. Low and behold, I hear my doctor's voice. My husband peeps around the corner and there he is! He waved him over and he came to see me. I don't think I'd ever been as happy to see someone at the right moment as I had been to see him then. He checked me out and determined they'd probably try to stop labor and hold me a few more days.

11 am: My parents are now on the way to Charleston with Tony's not too far behind. The doctor had now determined that they were going to need to transfer me to a hospital in a bigger city (Champaign, for those of you who are familiar with our region) because if they couldn't stop my labor, they would prefer that hospital for their neonatal services. So, they'll send an ambulance, I'm told. At this point we're still thinking I'll be on hospital bed rest for a few days, if not weeks.

12 pm: I'm starving, but of course they won't let me eat. Now the ambulance is here to get me and the nurse is getting me ready to transfer onto the stretcher. Of course they send two male ambulance personnel to assist so all I can think about (and say out loud) is, "Please keep my butt covered!" For whatever reason, although you pretty much lose all dignity during the birth process, I became obsessed with no one seeing my back end! I get to the ambulance and tell my husband to make sure he gets something to eat on his way up to the next hospital (it's about a 45-minute ride) since we don't know when we'll get the next meal. As soon as I get in the ambulance I'm talking to the nurse about the hospital bedrest and such and she just looks at me and says with a smirk, "Oh no, honey, we're having this baby today!" WHAT?! That's all I could think. "Today, you mean, like this afternoon?" Yes, it would be this afternoon, well evening. My poor husband in the car behind us has yet to gain this piece of knowledge...

1:15 pm: We arrive at the larger hospital and I'm taken to my room. Contractions are stronger now. They're going to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound is fine, baby's lungs are fine, no steroid shots needed. My husband is now in the room and is about as shocked as I am that we are going to have this baby today (by C-section because the stubborn little guy was breech, just like his momma).

2:30 pm (I think): Both families have arrived and heard the news. Now it's time to wait and bide our time.

5:30 pm: Finally, an operating room is open and Tony and I get suited up to go in. It's cold as ice (yeah, I'm singing that song now too) in the operating room and I'm splayed with arms out on the table like some kind of posable doll. Now I'm shaky because I've had the spinal block to numb my bottom half and the whole thing is getting very real. The nice and very enetertaining anesthesiologist gets me a blanket and they bring Tony in after what feels like forever.

6:34 pm: They wheel over the most precious, perfect little person I've ever seen (5 lbs, 6 oz, 19 in. long) and let Tony take a few pictures before he is whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). I'm taken to recovery where Tony graciously waits for a while before I tell him to please go talk to the families and go with the baby. I fall asleep.

This is where the timeline gets away from me. I was pretty groggy, but the long and the short of it is I got wheeled to the NICU in my hospital bed, they took a picture of our new little family and then my family and Tony's came to visit me in my hotel room until I got tired and sick from the anesthesia and everyone went home so we could sleep. It was just about the craziest day I've ever had but it was worth it a million times over.

My poor little Tyler had to stay in the NICU for a total of 18 days. Luckily he was never sick, just still developing. He ate mostly through a feeding tube until we could get him used to a bottle. They called him a "grower/feeder" since he didn't have any health issues. He had an IV for one day and oxygen for one day and then he was on his own unless you count heart monitors for the rest of the 18 days. Only me, Tony and both sets of grandparents could visit him (to keep germs to a minimum), so it was hard not to be able to show him off, but it made it that much more exciting when everyone could finally meet him. It was hard to leave him in the NICU (we stayed at a house on the hospital's campus for a few days, it was a free service and wonderful, but after a while we decided to go home and drive back and forth) but he's home now and almost 5 months old doing great! He's definitely my favorite (mis)adventure to date!

We recently had the plesure of attending the NICU reunion and seeing some of the babies that were  with Tyler in the NICU and others that were there while we were. It's nice to see them all healthy, happy and outside the confines of a hospital. It was also wonderful to see the nurses and doctors that provided such wonderful care for our favorite little guy!

Tyler Nicholas Pleasant

4 months old

A Misadventures in Mommyhood Moment

Brought to you by the letter "P" for poop!

As you've probably discovered, I'm a new mom. I definitely don't take that job lightly, but it definitely has it's lighter moments. Here is a recent one.

So, on a recent morning I'm doing my hair in the main bathroom of our home. My husband and I have decided that we need to be better adults and maybe try getting up even before our son is awake as opposed to using him as our alarm. What happens when we do that is we tend to already be behind before our day even gets started, so we're both up getting things done. When my son wakes up we take turns getting ready and then switch so the other person can get ready for work. But, I digress.

I'm in the bathroom doing my hair and the door flys open and my husband is standing there with my son. I thought to myself, "What could possibly get them away from their morning Sports Center session?" Then it hit me. The smell of a little gift my son often makes for us. My husband usually brings my son to me when it's time for the big diaper changes and I don't mind but this became funny really fast. He was holding the baby horizontally and when he lifted him away from his body and pulled away the burp rag hung over my son's behind I could see that there was poo-poo on my husband's shirt and pants and all over my son's leg. After I stopped laughing I took over so my husband could go take a shower.

Now, for anyone who has ever dealt with a blow-out you know it's hard to decide where to start. These are zip-up jammies my son is wearing so in order to get the diaper in the first place I have to remove his feet from the little footies of the pajamas. Oh yeah. Not pleasant. So, I'm covered in it, he's covered in it and now my husband is laughing. But we get that all cleaned up and manged to get all wiped down and smelling good. I dress my son and the day goes on as planned...gather up, load up and head to daycare. On our way out the door we decide we need to soak the jammies and throw them in a sink after discovering our washer doesn't really have a soak cycle per-se. You can only imagine what my house smelled like by lunchtime. Let's just say I'll leave it at that!