Time

Blogger messed up my paragraphs. The extra . 's are where my breaks should be. A lot can happen in just 5 years. . 5 years ago on April 1st Matt gets this crazy idea to call his parents and play an April Fools joke on them. He says we're on our way to the hospital, the baby's coming early. Ha ha. April Fools, we're just going to Taco Time. . It goes over so well we make the same call to his Grandma. She's a good sport and laughs. . That goes so well we call my parents. My mom starts crying on the phone. Oops. Not funny. . Fast forward a couple days to April 5th. I go to work and punch the clock like it ain't no big thang. I was 33 week pregnant and my boss felt like it was a good day to take me to lunch to find out what I was thinking regarding maternity leave, working after the baby, etc. At lunch I started to feel a little weird. Not alarmingly weird but strange enough that I couldn't finish my lunch. This should have been a big red flag for me since this might have been the first time in my life I didn't successfully clean my plate. . We chatted and I held myself together the best I could. We agreed I could take as long of a maternity leave as I wanted and when I came back I'd work 3 days a week. Managed to negotiate that while trying not to throw up all over his food. Feelin' pretty good about myself. . I go back to the office and I'm still feeling off. I chalk it up to the uncomfortableness that comes with growing a human inside your body and head home early for the day. A little nap should take care of this, no problem. . I went home and attempted to sleep all afternoon. Matt came home from work and gave me the where's dinner look. I explained there would be no dinner tonight. My body hurt and I no longer cared about anyone but myself. . I rolled myself into the bedroom and decided to really give this sleep thing a try. A nap WILL fix this, I know it. . By 2 am, having not slept at all, I wake Matt up. . Me: Matt, I think we should call the doctor. . Matt: Shouldn't we time something? Go figure that out and then wake me up again is whatever we're supposed to time is the right amount of time apart. . Me: No. . So I call my doctor in the middle of the night and tell her that everything hurts. I don't know what a contraction feels like but I'm pretty sure nothing is contracting, it's just hurting. She tells me to go to the ER and just have them check on the baby to make sure nothing is going on. . Me: Matt, get up. The doctor says we should go to the hospital. . Matt: Why? Me: Just get the swear word up! . Matt gets up, brushes his teeth (the full 2-minute Sonicare cycle mind you), searches for the perfect shirt in the dryer, and is finally ready like 10 minutes later. The fool was killing me and I could barely take it - I was thinking maybe single momhood was something I should look in to. . So we finally get there and I get all checked in to the ER. The doctor hooks me up to a monitor and can see that I'm apparently having contractions. . ER doctor: You're dilated to a 5 and your water is minutes away from breaking. Why didn't you come in like 12 hours ago? . Me: Because I've never had a frickin' baby before! No one ever explained what it would feel like! Plus my due date is May 24th and today is April 6th! . So the rest is less comical. They check and see that baby is breach and start prepping me for c-section surgery. . We have to eat shit and call our parents and say that this time it's no joke. We're sorry about before, God is clearly punishing us so please don't make it worse on us, just get here as soon as you can. . The rest of the day is a bit fuzzy. There were some drugs administered, some happy feelings, some scared feelings, a baby got sliced out of me, more drugs, and that's about it. . Charlie was born around 9 am and spent the next 5 weeks of his life in the NICU. We spent every day with him, including his first Easter, and got to take him home in May. . He had a rough start but 5 years later he's got it all figured out. Avert your eyes now if you have a problem with bragging. His preschool teacher told us he reads at a second grade level, he can do a 150 piece puzzle, he's learning math, he scored his first goal at his soccer practice last week, and he's ridiculously nice to his sister. . Charlie - Thanks for everything you've taught me these last 5 years. It's been amazing. I love you!