Happy Birthday to ME!

Thirty-six years ago today my mother delivered a baby, asked the nurse "what is it?", to which the nurse responded "A Baby." And everyone but my mom got steak for dinner that night. (total rip-off if you ask me, I LOVE steak!)

It's become tradition for Keith and I to go out for steak on our birthdays and for our anniversary. The only time we didn't go out for steak was an absolute disaster. (I still need a new hood for the stove, we should get that soon, shouldn't we?)

So tonight we're going out to Nikko's, the Japanese Steak House at the OP Marriott, with my most favorite-est people in town, my family by choice. (We were going to go last year, but we had babysitter issues and wound up canceling, so we're trying again this year.)

Speaking of the Marriott...

Keith and I went to the new club Manhattans last night, the one at 135th and State Line, behind Hardee's. It's a nice club, but their bartenders SUCK. They're aiming for the over-30 crowd, who tend to be a bit pickier about their drinks, and they have bartenders that should be at a college hang-out. No imagination what-so-ever if you tell them to make you something interesting with a specific alcohol. And my lemon-drop martini was the oddest tasting one I'd ever had. They don't have any fresh ingredients and use a mix for almost everything.

Pitchers in the Marriott, on the other hand, uses fresh ingredients for EVERYTHING, including making their own simple syrups. The only mix they use is for Bloody Mary's. Everything else is made the way it was invented. One of the managers (a friend of mine) said that Pitchers will soon be getting a make-over (like the rest of the hotel) and will be much more up-scale in looks. And they're going to stop having "bartenders" and have "mixologists" instead.

I'm sure that it helps having a restaurant to get everything fresh, but if you're going to cater to the over-30 crowd, make sure you've at least got the right kind of bartenders. For Keith and I, we tend to view cocktails as cuisine, not just another drink. Know how to make them right, dammit!

today's post

Well, I've kinda sorta started writing Josie's birth story. I have a new file on my computer with her name on it, anyway. (It's completely blank on the inside, but it's there, dammit.)

I also should write down how Keith and I met, and our first/second date story.

*sigh*

Is this nablopomo thing done yet?

Matthew's Birth Story, Part II

Continued from yesterday:

I had decided that I would like to see if I could go without an epidural (I have this thing about needles in my spine), but I wasn’t above taking some other drugs like Staydol or something similar, which is why I had an I.V. hooked up in me earlier. About 20 minutes into the wonderful hydro-tub, what they call transitional labor hit me, and the first thing I asked for was drugs! I had about 3 of those nasty contractions before they managed to get me back in the bed and hooked up to the monitor. Staydol was administered thru my I.V., and not too long after that, everyone but my two nurses, Angie and Mary Jo, and Keith was kicked out. (Kristina was there by then, so it must have been around 2 or 2:30 p.m.)

The Staydol helped a little, mainly my contractions never got any more painful than they already were, but they never diminished in pain. I have no idea how long this part lasted, I lost all track of time. But I went from being 7 cm dilated to 10 cm pretty fast. Probably in about an hour. I did learn that breathing really helped, and I think I would have done better if I could have focused more on that. This being my first time and all, it was really hard for me to do.

Toward the end of transitional labor, as they were getting the bed ready for me to push (the leg holders, etc…), the automatic blood pressure cuff attached to my arm decided it needed to check my blood pressure right in the middle of a contraction. Needless to say, this did not make me a happy camper. I didn’t like the damn thing when I was in early labor, let alone in the middle of a contraction at the end of transitional labor! I ripped the cuff off so fast, I almost took my I.V. with it! I think I threw it, too, but it was attached to the damn monitor, so it didn’t go very far.

Finally, they let me start pushing. The pain went away, and I was in my own shiny, sparkly, blue world. Those wonderful endorphins finally kicked in! I think I actually slept between some of the contractions! I do remember Angie and Keith telling me the baby had really dark brown hair. I opened my eyes, looked around, and I wondered where everyone was, cause all I saw was Angie, Keith, and Mary Jo. I figured if they could see his hair, there should be more people in the room!

Not too long after this, other nurses and the doctor finally came in. (BTW, did I mention that my doctor was in Oregon on vacation for the week???? I got the nazi replacement, of course.)

My wonderful replacement doctor was Dr. Shlichter. She looked like a 6 foot Viking with blonde hair and no make-up.

I finally started to feel the “ring of fire” that the books talk about. As I was preparing myself to accept the pain, the doctor decided to insert two fingers from each hand and stretch me. Everyone in the waiting room heard me scream. I came up far enough to see what the doctor was doing. It was the first time I’d seen my crotch in over three months. I really wanted to punch her and call her a bitch, but about that time, Keith started saying “he’s here, he’s here”, and then they handed me my precious new angel. Of course, she said all that pain that I had felt was the baby, but I know better. If she’d have given me just a few more seconds instead of hurrying the process, I’m sure my endorphins would have blurred quite a bit of what I felt. Damn nazi doctor.

Matthew Kerac arrived at 4:08 p.m.,
weighing 7 lbs, 12 oz, 19 inches long.

Pretty much everything after that is documented by Keith with the camera. And yes, I know I looked stoned in most of them, that was the endorphins. (Sparkly blue world, remember?)

On a funny note, Dr. Batty, my ob., was landing at the airport about the time I was delivering Matthew. He came in early Monday morning, and Keith told him he really liked his Zen method of delivering by not delivering!

Hopefully, this will inspire me to actually write Josie's birth story sometime this month!

Matthew's Birth Story, Part I

Yeah, I'm going to cheat today (and tomorrow), and just copy Matthew's Birth Story over from our family blog. I'm hoping that it will inspire me to get off my ass and actually write Josie's birth story. She's only 18 months old already, it should have been done a year ago!

On Sunday, August 17th, 2003, I woke up around 5 a.m. having contractions. They were about a minute or so long, and 15 to 20 minutes apart. Not bad, just enough to wake me up.

The very first thing I did was to go downstairs and eat a tuna sandwich and drink my caffeine for the day (a can of Dr. Pepper, natch). Then I went back upstairs and took a shower. By 6 a.m., my contractions were stronger, so I woke up Keith and told him to take a shower, and that he probably wasn’t going in to work that day.

By 7 a.m., I was having up to 3 contractions in a 5 minute period. We double checked our packing of supplies, and loaded the car, arriving at Shawnee Mission Hospital around 7:30 a.m. The nurses checked me, and since I was dilated to 3.5 cm and 100% effaced with pretty regular contractions, they told me I wasn’t going anywhere and admitted me. (Lots o’ paperwork, even with me pre-registering.) We called our parents and Sam (Samantha), letting them know what was going on. Sam arrived about a half hour after we called her, and Keith’s mom, Jan, arrived around noon. (My parents live in Springfield, MO, and didn’t make it up until Monday.)

My blood pressure was pretty high, so they kept me in my room hooked up to the monitor pretty much most of the morning. Sometime after Jan arrived it had lowered enough that they let me walk around the halls with just my I.V. pole. I asked for the hydro-tub* to be hooked up in my room while I was walking around. About the 4th or 5th lap, my water broke in the middle of the hallway! It was pretty funny. They made me go back to my room since they apparently didn’t want me leaking all over their halls! But the tub was pretty much hooked up by that point, so it was okay.

I stayed in the hydro-tub for about 30 minutes or so, the first 20 being completely pain free. It was a wonderful thing!

* At Shawnee Mission, they have this really cool Hydro-tub that can be hooked up in your room. It’s like a really big bathtub on rollers.

Tomorrow, part II!